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asteriuszenith · 4 years

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VT Investigation Files: POI Files: Nocturne

(Masterpost)

Account/s

Blogspot

Updated As Of:

7/27/2020

With Regards to His Name

Nocturne is obviously not his real name. He preferred to use that pseudonym in order to maintain some anonymity despite, as he claimed, the fact that a lot of people already probably know his true name due to his whistleblowing days for a company like Montauk. I suppose it could also be a way for him to become more comfortable with sharing his own personal feelings by pretending that the anonymity could protect him from behind the scene.

Nevertheless, as a point of reference for my own files, I’ll state it here that his name is Vincent.

The name Nocturne has a rather interesting meaning behind it. According to google dot com, a nocturne is usually either a musical composition or a work of art that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night.

Vincent, on the other hand, came from the Roman name Vincentius, which was also derived from the latin word vicere which means “to conquer”.

The Nocturnal Archives

Nocturne created The Nocturnal Archives blogger account in order to record his journey on life after he graduated from high school.

At least, that had been the original intention of the blog before a certain event obviously caused an upheaval on his personal life.

After the death of Adrain Carter on October 14 2017, Nocturne became emboldened, or rather to be more accurate, passionate slash obsessed with finding the truth. What sort of truth? I think that originally, it was just to prove his mentor’s innocence with regards to the sexual harassment allegations Dr. Miz Cardozo made around a month after Adrian Carter’s death. However, the deeper he searched for the truth, the more he realized that it wasn’t just about proving his mentor’s innocence at that point but also beginning to pinpoint certain things that doesn’t add up such as his mentor’s research, the fishy events circulating around Miz Cardozo herself, and more.

Most of the entries in the blog contained some self-reflection and reminiscing that tells us of Nocturne’s inner thoughts as well as little facts sprinkled in here and there that told us more about what sort of person he was. Most of the times, however, the entries would focus on his journey for the truth, telling us with some frustration that he’s been encountering roadblock after roadblock in his search for information and sometimes, even when he got some intel, whenever he attempted to piece them all together… It always felt like there was something off or impossible about the information.

It’s definitely a very personal blog and for someone who gives off the vibes that he is a very private person save for when he is around people that he actually cares about, I’m surprised that he actually took the suggestion of his friend to create this blog and put it on public seriously.

Another thing that I’ve noticed on the format of the blog is that it might be heavily inspired by the House of the Leaves book written by Mark Z. Danielewski considering quotes from the book are heavily peppered in around the different entries especially when he’s getting in too deep when he’s talking about a heavy topic. Did he deliberately edit it like that? I don’t know. But I suppose I could always ask him when I manage to muster up the courage to actually talk in the comments.

On the Topic of Adrian Carter

Nocturne looks up to Adrian Carter. He’s constantly singing the man praises for his genius work and personality. He also admired Adrian’s parenting skills and his parent-child relationship with Cassie Carter, noting that despite the long periods of time when they’re physically distant, Adrian was still a hell lot more present in Cassie’s life compared to his own parents who lived much closer to him in distance.

As I said, Nocturne looks up to Adrian as his role model. He admitted in one of his entries that he practically worshipped the grounds the man walked upon with some self-aware light hearted humor:

“It felt like God himself had come down and was like, ‘hey guys, lemme give you some guidance in person here, face-to-godly-face.’”

I wonder if Adrian considered Nocturne as his personal student. If Adrian had been obsessed with perfecting the RedMan then he would have only allowed people that he trusted to influence the creation of the AI, right? So the good relationship between the mentor-student must have been a mutual one.

It appears that Adrian left behind his research to Nocturne or at least, Nocturne had been able to access the man’s lifelong research studies and projects as the creator of the blog had been expressing a nice mixture of appreciation, confusion, and frustration from what he was reading from Adrian’s texts. It appears that most of it doesn’t seem to make sense. He claimed that Adrian seems to have been looking for monsters in the dark judging from some of the ramblings he read through.

Still, Nocturne has nothing but respect and good words for his mentor despite his frustration. He remembers the man fondly and is very much insistent on clearing Adrian’s name after Miz Cardozo stained it with her confession.

Miz Cardozo

It appears as if the two barely crossed paths even as they worked closely with the same man. Nocturne mentioned that Adrian never worked with the three of them together, only ever working with him once Cardozo had gone home for the day (they were working together on RedMan). This claim might get updates if Nocturne will divulge more details on his and Cardozo’s relationship, if there is one outside of the loathing vibes he’d often give off whenever he talked about Cardozo on his blog.

Originally, Nocturne had stayed his tongue when talking about Cardozo after the harassment confession came out. It appeared that he was rejecting the notion that Adrian Carter would do such a thing and was also rather peeved at seeing how Cardozo turned a blind eye on how the world decided to treat Cassie as their newest scapegoat. He decided then that he’ll get to the bottom of these claims, find out for himself and for Cassie’s peace of mind on whether Cardozo’s claims were the truth. If not, he will let the world know of Cardozo’s lies and prove his mentor’s innocence.

However, when the news about Rosemary Road came out, all pretenses of politeness finally melted away from his mask and Nocturne basically declared war against Cardozo calling her a despicable person who had done so much disgusting things that it wouldn’t be surprising if they found out that she made that sexual harassment allegations in order to give her a better chance at taking Adrian’s place on the company as its new CEO.

Miz responded with a mocking, passive-aggressive post that called him a delusional conspiracy theorist and may or may not have peppered in some subtle/not so subtle threats at the end of his section in her answering post to his and Cassie’s callout posts.

Needless to say, I really wouldn’t recommend leaving these two alone together in one room as they might as well start ripping each other to shreds.

Montauk

Nocturne interned in Montauk during his last year in highschool and while he was studying in UCLA. During his time there, he must have shown a lot of promise to have captured Adrian Carter’s attention and satisfied his expectations along with maintaining an amicable relationship with the man to the point that he allowed him to work with him on RedMan.

However, as the years passed by, notably after Adrian’s death, the relationship between the corporation and this man must have soured enough due to Nocturne’s own digging into the company’s dirty secrets that he whistleblowed on the company’s shady dealings. Was the issue that he blew the whistle on the dubious experiments that caused the deaths of so many people? Perhaps that’s another thing to ask him in the future too.

Cabbage Girl

One day, during the summer of 2015, Nocturne burst into his mentor’s office without knocking in order to tell him about his progress on his tasks and met the daughter of Montauk in a humorous way that the head of the massive corporation introduced his daughter to him and created the birth of the fondly remembered inside joke slash nickname “Cabbage”.

Nocturne and Cassie are obviously close as they are both cohabiting together and are actually in a romantic relationship with one another. The man obviously adores Cassie, his dorky little love letter praising her and telling her how much he loves her in his blog is already evidence enough as it provided a glimpse into the man’s softer side that I believe is generally reserved for his cat, Cassie, and their friends. He’s also really protective of her which is rather cute, in my opinion. He’s been really supportive of her over the past years since her father’s death and you could see it or rather hear it in the way Cassie would often pepper in (heh) mentions of him during her stories over the months.

However, it does make one wonder if they both think that it’s just the two of them against the world as nobody or almost nobody is taking their side that Adrian Carter is innocent of the accusation that Cardozo threw at him after his death. From what I saw, the world even condemned Cassie for not ‘cancelling’ her father.

Thankfully, they are both acting as each other’s support system in their trying times and from what I observed in the tiny peeks into their interactions with each other in Cassie’s entries and Nocturne’s journals, they trust the other to drag them out of their own heads when they get in too deep in their own thoughts to the point that they were shutting the world out. I’m just glad that they’re not alone right now as what they are attempting to do would be nigh impossible without anyone they could trust backing them.

Investigations and Seeking the Truth

Nocturne seems to have taken it upon himself to investigate a hell lot of things in his quest for the truth. The Cardozo-Lawrence case, Cardozo’s Relationship with Adrian Carter, the thing with Rosemary Road, Montauk Stuff, Continuing Adrian Carter’s Research and Projects, and it seems he’s beginning to delve into investigating the Bureau of Unreality and how they seem to be innately connected to Cardozo and Montauk and the Rosemary Road case.

All I can say is… My dude, my man, you need to learn how to delegate this shit to others.

(Bold words coming from someone who’s also doing the same thing. Jesus fucking Christ, Robin… What on earth are you doing?)

No wonder he’s having a hard time seeing the forest making up the trees when he’s trying to take in so much information as much as he can. I can’t exactly blame him since I’m not any better but seriously… This is just one massive way to burn ourselves out easily. Anyway—

It appears that for every information that he gets, he also receives fifty more questions which would understandably be very frustrating for him and it doesn’t help that since this is something that could bring quite the dirt into light, a lot of people and organizations are trying to prevent him from being able to dig in too deep and sink his teeth into actually helpful information rather than being led away into another possible dead end via crumbs for intel which would equal to a lot of time lost which could have been used for actual progression in the investigation.

I would suggest finding someone they could trust in order to help them with the investigation but how would you even know if somebody is trustworthy when it seems like the entire universe is completely against you finding the truth?

How would one be assured that the person whom they dragged in to help would also fall for the same trap of getting stuck in the minimal details to the point that they start seeing and hunting for monsters and lies in the dark? Especially when you, yourself, are starting to fall for the same trick?

Honestly? I don’t know if any of us would have an actual answer to that question. You could go the path of the more people to help with the search for the truth, the better, but then wouldn’t that just run the risk of all of us suffering from a horrid game of Telephone? It’s just such a high risk thing.

Either way, it seems that Nocturne’s investigation did at least yield some intel as word about his determination to find out what the actual fuck is happening in the world is getting around and people have started giving him leads that did bear some fruit even if it also created more questions.

Your Cat Pictures… Give It To Me.

Oh.

Nocturne also has a cat baby named Truant and I want a picture of him, damn it!

Somebody stop me from spamming the shit out of the poor man’s blog with begs for serotonin shots.

#voxtenebris #puppet collection #puppetcollection #arg

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mulanxiaojie · 4 years

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The high-profile remake, with an all-Asian cast, a PG-13 rating and a politically-charged star, was always going to pose major risks. Then the coronavirus upended its entire release plan.

Liu Yifei, star of Disney's live-action remake of Mulan, lives in Beijing, but she is originally from Wuhan, epicenter of the coronavirus. In January, the 32-year-old actress left China for Los Angeles to begin press for the film, weeks before the virus' outbreak, which has now infected more than 77,000 people, killed more than 2,500 and wreaked havoc in her home country. She says she doesn't have any family or close friends personally affected by the disease — she left Wuhan when she was 10 — but the epidemic has added an impossible-to-foresee variable to her film's March 27 worldwide release.

Liu pauses when asked about the outbreak. "It's really heavy for me to even think about it," she says. "People are doing the right thing. They are being careful for themselves and others. I'm so touched actually to see how they haven't been out for weeks. I'm really hoping for a miracle and that this will just be over soon."

In China, Liu is a household name, nicknamed "Fairy Sister" for her elegance and beauty. Modeling since age 8, she broke out in the 2003 Chinese TV series Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, a commercial hit in China and the highest-rated Chinese drama in Taiwan at the time, and hasn't stopped working in film and TV since, earning fashion partnerships with Adidas, Shiseido and Armani along the way.

Disney and director Niki Caro selected Liu from more than 1,000 aspirants from around the world to star as Hua Mulan, the Chinese heroine who disguises herself as a man to fight in the Imperial Army in a film carefully designed to appeal to Western and Chinese audiences alike. But now there's a question of when Mulan will be released in China. With the coronavirus shutting down all 70,000 of the country's theaters since Jan. 24, it's unclear — and more unlikely every day — that multiplexes will reopen in time for its planned release. (Several high-profile U.S. films, including Universal's Dolittle and 1917 and Searchlight's Jojo Rabbit, saw their February releases scrapped.) "It certainly has worldwide and global appeal, but there's no denying that this is a very important film for the Chinese market," says Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. "It's a huge blow for Disney if it doesn't release in China." Disney president of production Sean Bailey says he's "looking at it day by day."

Of course, this puts added pressure on the $200 million budgeted film — the priciest of Disney's recent live-action remakes — to perform in the U.S. and the rest of the world. Liu, who is enveloped in her own storm of controversy based on a political social media post about the Hong Kong protests, says she is trying hard not to think about all that. "It would really be a loss for me if I let the pressure overtake my possibilities," says the actress, who learned English when she lived in New York as a child for four years with her mother, a dancer, after her parents' divorce.

Even before the outbreak of the virus, Mulan — the first Disney-branded film with an all-Asian cast and the first to be rated PG-13 (for battle scenes) — would have marked one of the studio's riskiest live-action films to date. While the original 1998 Mulan was a critical and commercial hit, garnering a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination and grossing more than $300 million worldwide ($475 million today), it faltered at the Chinese box office. Part of the reason is that the Chinese government stalled its premiere for nearly a year because of lingering anger over Disney's 1997 release of Kundun, Martin Scorsese's Dalai Lama movie that dealt with China's occupation of Tibet. By the time Mulan reached theaters in late February 1999, most children had returned to school after the Chinese New Year holiday and pirated copies were widely available. For the new film, the plan was to counter piracy by releasing the movie in China the same day as the rest of the world, a strategy that's no longer possible.

The film also has tested the ability and tolerance of Disney — which aims to be ideologically neutral — in managing global political fallout. In August, Liu stirred up a major controversy when she reposted a pro-police comment on Chinese platform Weibo (where she has more than 66 million followers) at the height of the violence in Hong Kong. Her action was seen by critics of the Chinese government as supporting police brutality; soon after, the hashtag #BoycottMulan started trending on Twitter. Liu, who has American co-citizenship from her time in the U.S., was harshly criticized around the world for supporting oppression.

"I think it's obviously a very complicated situation and I'm not an expert," she says now, cautious in the extreme. "I just really hope this gets resolved soon." When pressed, Liu, whose answer seemed rehearsed, declines to say much more, simply repeating, "I think it's just a very sensitive situation." (Bailey also deflects when asked: "Yifei's politics are her own, and we are just focused on the movie and her performance.")

"Most Chinese celebrities choose to avoid posting such political statements because of the risks to their careers internationally," says Dorothy Lau, a professor at the Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University. But though Liu's post drew criticism globally, some experts believe the political drama could actually result in more support for the film in China. "At the time, the government came out in various publications supporting the film very strongly," says USC professor Stanley Rosen, who specializes in Chinese politics and society. "There's a real impetus on the part of the Chinese government to make this work. I'm sure the government is going to try to show that the boycott has had no effect." And while her comment might still anger filmgoers in Hong Kong, where the recent live-action Aladdin took in $8 million, that market is tiny compared to the mainland (total 2019 Hong Kong box office was $245 million compared with China's $9.2 billion). "Most people outside Hong Kong have likely forgotten about this controversy," says Rosen. "But the Chinese government does not forget these things."

The fact that this version of Mulan is a large-scale war epic inspired more by the ancient Chinese ballad than the original animated film may also help win fans in Beijing, but the choice carries its own significant risks: The film needs to satisfy Chinese audiences raised on the legend while not disappointing a generation of fans in Asia (and elsewhere) for whom the animated film is foundational. "People would come in to audition and would say, 'Sorry, I know this is really unprofessional, but before I start, I just want you to know, the animated movie was the first time I saw someone that looked like me speak English in a movie theater,' " says producer Jason Reed. "The stakes couldn't be higher."

Mulan also represents a leap of faith in the film's director, Caro, whose previous two films boasted budgets of about 10 percent of Mulan's (The Zookeeper's Wife and Disney's 2015 sports drama McFarland USA were each in the $20 million to $25 million range). Caro, 53, was not Disney's first choice. Before hiring the New Zealand filmmaker, the studio targeted directors of Asian descent, including Taiwanese Oscar winner Ang Lee (he was busy promoting Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk) and Chinese helmer Jiang Wen. Still, Caro showcased a knack for representing cultures outside of her own with her 2002 debut Whale Rider, which follows a young Maori girl who wants to become chief, a role traditionally reserved for men.

The feminist story of Mulan resonated deeply with Caro. "When I first started wanting to be a filmmaker, there was so little precedent for women doing this [big studio] work," she says. She has now directed the most expensive live-action film by a woman, joining only a handful (Kathryn Bigelow, Ava DuVernay and Patty Jenkins) who have helmed films costing more than $100 million. "Patty changed the game with Wonder Woman. It was like a shot of adrenaline for me as a filmmaker," says Caro, who assembled a mostly female-led crew, including cinematographer Mandy Walker, costume designer Bina Daigeler, makeup designer Denise Kum and first assistant director Liz Tan.

To those still upset that an Asian filmmaker didn't get the job, Caro responds: "Although it's a critically important Chinese story and it's set in Chinese culture and history, there is another culture at play here, which is the culture of Disney, and that the director, whoever they were, needed to be able to handle both — and here I am."

Soon after Caro's hiring, rumors about the movie began to swirl online. Years of studios centering Asian movies around white protagonists (from Scarlett Johansson's Ghost in the Shell to Matt Damon's The Great Wall) meant the threat of whitewashing loomed large. An early report online claimed that the first draft, penned by Elizabeth Martin and Lauren Hynek, featured a white male protagonist.

"This is the first time I've been on a big touchstone movie with the internet what it is today. And I had a Google alert set, so I'd see these things, 'Oh, there was originally a white male lead, or they're casting Jennifer Lawrence,' and they were all just made up," says Reed, who adds that there may have been two non-Chinese characters in the initial script, but both were secondary roles.

The rumors may have been unfounded, but the fallout was real: The Lawrence-as-Mulan story sparked a 2016 petition, "Tell Disney You Don't Want a Whitewashed Mulan!" drawing more than 110,000 signatures.

Ironically, as that rumor swirled, Caro struggled to find an actress to play Mulan. The global hunt began in October 2016, when Caro sent a team of casting directors to each continent and virtually every small village in China. They were looking for an actress who could play Mulan across three phases, from a young woman unsure of her place to a soldier masquerading as a man and, finally, as an empowered warrior. She had to be fluent in English, handle the physical demands of martial arts and deliver the more emotional moments with Mulan's family. "She's a needle in a haystack, but we were going to find her," says Caro. "It's impossible to make this movie without this person."

Though the studio cast a wide multinational net, Bill Kong — a veteran Chinese producer known for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Monster Hunt who was brought on as a producer on Mulan — advised Caro that in order for this film to play well in China, not just anyone of Asian descent would work. "The first thing I told her was, 'Hire a Chinese girl. You can't hire a Japanese girl to do this,' " he says.

Actresses who made it past that initial audition were brought to Los Angeles, but, after vetting several promising candidates for months, Caro decided to start over. (The search dragged on for so long that Disney delayed the original November 2018 release date.) Eventually, Liu, who had been unavailable during the first pass because of a TV show in China, was able to audition.

"I was determined that whoever played Mulan was not going to be fragile and feminine," says Caro. "She had to pass as a man in a man's army." So the director and a trainer put Liu through a 90-minute physical assessment, with extreme cardio and weight exercises. Other actresses fared less well. "Boy, did they flame out," says Caro with a laugh. But Liu "never complained once, never said, 'I can't.' She went to her limits."

With Liu, Disney also found an actress who could speak English, was familiar with martial arts from her TV work in China and, most importantly, was known to the Chinese market.

While Liu spent three months training for the role in New Zealand, Caro finished up her own extensive research. She took multiple trips to China and spoke to dozens of experts — including the world's foremost specialist on Tang dynasty military strategy. She also studied the 360-word Chinese poem The Ballad of Mulan, which first told the young heroine's story. The legend, which originated in the fifth or sixth century CE, is a tale as familiar in China as the story of Joan of Arc or Paul Bunyan in the West, and it's been adapted many times into plays, operas and films.

"I certainly wasn't aware of how deeply important it is to Mainland Chinese — all children are taught it," says Caro. "She is so meaningful that many places I went, people would say, 'Well, she comes from my village.' It was wonderful to feel that profound connection — but also terrifying."

As soon as the first trailers rolled out, so did the grumblings about factual inaccuracy, like the choice to situate Mulan's family in a tulou, a traditional round structure that housed several clans. These homes were mostly present in southern China, in what is now Fujian province (Mulan is said to be from the north), and would not have existed at the time she lived.

"I told [Caro] to not be too concerned about the historical accuracy," says Kong. "Mulan, though very famous, is fictional. She's not a historical person."

Disney tested the film thoroughly with Chinese audiences, including its own local executives. In an early version, Mulan kissed love interest Chen Honghui (Yoson An) on a bridge when they were about to part. "It was very beautiful, but the China office went, 'No, you can't, that doesn't feel right to the Chinese people,' " says Caro. "So we took it out."

Caro and the writers, Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa (the husband-and-wife team behind Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Jurassic World who rewrote the original script), also had to consider the passionate fans of the 1998 film. Most Disney remakes, like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King, have remained loyal to the tone and structure of the animated source material while adding a new song or character. Departing from that formula wasn't a swift decision. "We had a lot of conversations about it," says Reed. Ultimately they wanted "to tell this story in a way that is more real, more relatable, where we don't have the benefit of the joke to hide behind things that might be uncomfortable and we don't break into song to tell us the subtext."

They swapped the musical numbers and funny animal sidekicks for a large-scale war epic in which Mulan takes her father's place in the Imperial Army. "It's a woman's story that has been told for centuries but never by women, and we felt like it was really time to tell that story," says Silver. The question is whether Generation Z and millennials, who fell in love with these animated tales as kids and helped boost Aladdin to its $1 billion global haul, will embrace the direction. "To be honest, we really go by our gut and what creatively excites the team here," says Bailey. "I think it shows that there can be different approaches to these [movies] that have validity."

When word leaked that Mushu, the silly dragon sidekick (originally voiced by Eddie Murphy), would not be included, some fans expressed disappointment on social media. But the character's disappearance makes sense in the Chinese context. "Mushu was very popular in the U.S., but the Chinese hated it," says Rosen. "This kind of miniature dragon trivialized their culture."

Unlike its Marvel-branded films, Disney live-action movies must appeal to significantly younger audiences. Yet Caro wanted to make a real war movie. "You have to deliver on the war of it," she says, "and how do you do that under the Disney brand where you can't show any violence, gratuitous or otherwise?" She took advantage of the film's stunning locations, like setting a battle sequence in a geothermal valley, where steam could mask the fighting. "Those sequences, I'm proud of them. They're really beautiful and epic — but you can still take kids. No blood is shed. It's not Game of Thrones."

Disney's past live-action performance in China is a mixed bag. Both The Lion King ($120.5 million there) and Jungle Book ($148 million) enjoyed strong showings. Aladdin earned only $53 million, while 2017's Beauty and the Beast took in just $84 million (though it earned $1.3 billion worldwide).

Of course, the expectations for Mulan in China are much higher. "They will eventually release it in China," Dergarabedian notes. "It's just a matter of when and what effect that might have." Some analysts forecast that the film could match the success of the Kung Fu Panda series. The third movie, released in 2016, earned north of $144.2 million and became the country's biggest animated film ever. It was praised for being a Hollywood film that understood and showed respect toward the Chinese culture. Panda, however, had the advantage of being a Chinese co-production, which guarantees a larger share of the market — an advantage Mulan doesn't have.

Caro thinks about the film's fate there in more than simply financial terms. "Of course it's vitally important that it succeeds in China," she says, "because it belongs to China."

#mulan #live action mulan #disney #chinese #article #interview #china #liu yifei

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blackkudos · 4 years

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Sherri Shepherd

Sherri Evonne Shepherd (born April 22, 1967) is an American actress, comedian, author, and television personality. She has appeared in several TV shows in recurring roles, and starred as Ramona Platt on the ABC sitcom Less than Perfectfrom 2002 to 2006, for which she was well received and was nominated for the BET Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2005.

From 2007 to 2014, Shepherd was a co-host on The View, for which she received multiple Daytime Emmy Award nominations, winning one in 2009. In 2009, she starred in a sitcom of her own on Lifetime, Sherri, which was cancelled after one season, and also published the novel Permission Slips: Every Woman's Guide to Giving Herself a Break. In 2012, she appeared as a celebrity contestant on the fourteenth season of Dancing with the Stars. Shepherd started hosting the game show Best Ever Trivia Show on the Game Show Network on June 10, 2019.

Early life

Shepherd was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of LaVerne (d. 1991) and Lawrence A. Shepherd (born c. 1947), a church deacon. She is the eldest of three sisters.

Career

Shepherd first became recognized for recurring roles on the sitcoms Suddenly Susan, Everybody Loves Raymond and The Jamie Foxx Show in the late 1990s, before starring in the show Less Than Perfect in the lead role of Ramona Platt from 2002–2006. From 2007 – 2013, she had a recurring role as Angie, the wife of character Tracy Jordan, on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock. In 2009, she starred for one season in Lifetime Television's Sherri, a sitcom about Shepherd's life. She played Daphne in several episodes of How I Met Your Mother in 2013. As of 2017, Shepherd plays Anne Flatch in NBC's mockmumentary legal-comedy series Trial & Error.

In addition to her film and television work, Shepherd appeared on Broadway in Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical production of Cinderella in 2013.

Television personality

Shepherd has appeared as a guest host and contestant on several television shows such as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Rachael Ray, and To Tell The Truth. Shepherd also hosted Nickelodeon's NickMom Night Out special from 2013–14, Shepherd currently hosts Best Ever Trivia Show on the Game Show Network. The show premiered on June 10, 2019.

She co-hosted the 35th Daytime Emmy Awards on June 20, 2008.

In 2006, Shepherd was a frequent guest co-host on ABC's The View. She became a permanent co-host from 2007 to 2014. She received several awards for her work on the show. Since leaving The View in 2014, Shepherd has continued to make several appearances on the show as a guest host and "lead contributor" throughout 2015 and 2016.

Shepherd was criticized after one 2007 broadcast of The View. The show was often filmed "live", with little or no editing. She stated she did not "believe in evolution. Period." Co-host Whoopi Goldberg asked her, "Is the world flat?" Shepherd responded, "I don't know," and expanded that she "never thought about it". Shepherd later referred to her statement as a "brain fart" brought on by nerves. Barbara Walters and Shepherd talked after that episode: Walters said, "Dear, the Earth is round", and Shepherd responded with: "Barbara, I know that!"

Similar criticism erupted after the December 4, 2007, broadcast of The View when, during a discussion initiated by Joy Behar about Epicurus, Shepherd attempted to assert that Christians existed in classical Greece, and that the Greeks threw them to the lions. When confronted on this point, she further claimed that "Jesus came first" (before Greeks and Romans) and stated, "I don't think anything predated Christians", to which Joy Behar responded: "The Jews."

Shepherd garnered criticism after admitting to never voting partly due to her upbringing as a strict Jehovah's Witness. She was quoted as saying that she just "never knew the dates or anything"; she stated, "I've never voted for anything in my life." In January 2008, Sherri referred to Gospel singer Shirley Caesar as "the black Patti LaBelle." LaBelle, like Caesar, is black.

Sherri said, "I was taught not to confront and interrupt people, but that's what I do every day on The View."

In 2008, she created controversy on The View due to "flippant" remarks regarding abortion. She later clarified, saying her remarks weren't meant to be flippant but rather inspire other women who may be dealing with guilt after abortions. She cited having multiple abortions in her 20s, suffering from shame and guilt from those experiences, later converting to Christianity.

On November 6, 2019, Shepherd was unmasked as the Penguin on the second season of The Masked Singer.

Dancing with the Stars

In March 2012, Shepherd participated as a celebrity contestant on the fourteenth season of ABC's Dancing with the Stars. Her dance partner was Val Chmerkovskiy. The team lasted several weeks.

Businesswoman

As of 2015, a project includes a line of wigs and hair add-ins.

Writing

Shepherd wrote the book Permission Slips: Every Woman's Guide to Giving Herself a Break, published in October 2009. Shepherd also has a co-author credit on Plan D: How to Lose Weight and Beat Diabetes, published in 2013.

Charity

Sherri raises funds for the YAI Sherri Shepherd "Believe in Abilities" Fund.

YAI supports people of all ages with intellectual and developmental disabilities in achieving the fullest life possible by creating new opportunities for living, loving, working, and learning. YAI is a network of agencies with programs that empower and enhance the lives of thousands of people we support and their families.

In 2011, Shepherd offered to pay six months' rent and utilities of homeless former American Gladiators star Debbie Clark (Storm).

Personal life

Shepherd was married to Jeff Tarpley from 2001 to 2010.

TV writer Lamar Sally proposed to Shepherd on December 26, 2010. They married in August 2011 at the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago, and in September 2012, Shepherd said the couple was searching for a surrogate in order to have a child. Sally filed for separation on May 2, 2014, and Shepherd filed for divorce days later. In July 2014, Sally petitioned a Los Angeles court for full legal and physical custody of the child expected via surrogacy, who was born in August 2014. On April 21, 2015, a Pennsylvania court ruled Shepherd is the legal parent of a child born from a surrogate mother.

Shepherd has type 2 diabetes after having had pre-diabetes for years.

Shepherd is a devout Christian.

Filmography

Awards and nominations

Daytime Emmy Award and Nominations

2008 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show Host(s) (The View)

2009 Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host(s) (The View)

2010 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show Host(s) (The View)

2011 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show Host(s) (The View)

2012 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show Host(s) (The View)

2013 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show Host(s) (The View)

2014 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show Host(s) (The View)

People's Choice Award Nomination

2013 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show Host(s) (The View)

Screen Actors Guild Award Nomination

2010 Nomination for Outstanding Cast in a Motion Picture Precious (Shared with rest of cast)

Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Award Nomination

2009 Nomination for Best Ensemble, Precious (Shared with all cast members)

Boston Society of Film Critics Award

2009 Award for Best Ensemble Cast (Precious)

Broadcast Film Critics Association Award Nomination

2010 Nomination for Best Acting Ensemble, Precious (Shared with rest of cast)

Black Reel Award Nomination

2010 Nomination for Best Ensemble Cast, Precious (Shared with rest of cast)

BET Comedy Award Nomination

2005 Nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series (Less than Perfect)

NAACP Image Awards and Nominations

2009 Award for Outstanding Talk Series (The View)

2010 Nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series (Sherri)

2010 Nomination for Outstanding Talk Series (The View)

2011 Award for Outstanding Talk Series (The View)

Gracie Award

2010 Award for Leading Actress in a Comedy Series (Sherri)

Braveheart Award

2010 Powerful Women in Hollywood Award

#04/22

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honnus · 5 years

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Uncharted: A Personal Story

I’ve been debating typing this all out for some time but never found the right medium, figured Tumblr would be the best shout since y’know, my Fakebook is mostly full of sarcastic, narcissistic asswipes haha so here goes...

(Oh no...not another Uncharted post I hear you say, but bear with me)

I freakin’ love the Uncharted game series (If you haven’t guessed!) the locales, the stories, the life or death run-for-your-damn-life set pieces, the gunfights, but mostly the characters. I think what mostly drew me to the character of Nate Drake was exactly what a friend of mine said when trying to debate that Tomb Raider is better; that Drake is just a guy. That’s the allure of his character. He has the one liners, the attitude, but really he’s just a guy. A guy who is constantly in way over his head, out for whatever he can get. We’ll not go into the whole climbing aspect of the games as even a diehard fan like myself knows that those sections are super far fetched haha.

The games all have a kind of historical and mythological element to them, with the exception of the final entry. The first game had us following in the footsteps of Sir Francis Drake while chasing the treasure of El Dorado, Among Thieves had Drake following clues from Marco Polo while searching for Shambhala in Nepal, While Uncharted 3 drew from the archaeology days of T.E. Lawrence and had players in search of Iram of the Pillars deep in the Rub’ al Khali desert. The Final game had Drake globe trotting to find Libertalia; the pirate sanctuary founded by Legendary pirates Henry Avery and Thomas Tew. So in a way, I guess you could say that the Uncharted games are educational too!

It’s not just Drake that’s the main draw to the games though. His mentor; Victor “Sully” Sullivan (voiced to perfection by Richard McGonagle btw!) is your classic grumpy, sleazy, cantankerous old geezer with a heart of platinum! While Elena Fisher - the love interest - is just too perfect. She’s the ying to Drake’s yang and despite playing second fiddle to Drake for the first three games, you always cared about her and more precisely; about her and Drake in a will they? won’t they? that spanned 3 games before they walked off into the sunset together at the end of ‘Drake’s Deception’ (or so we thought...) cue 2016 and along comes ‘A Thief’s End’, *quote* Nathan Drake’s Last Uncharted *unquote* and before the game has even come out there’s rumours flying left, right and centre -

Drake dies...Elena dies...Sully dies!

It was too much to take! Since 2007 we had gotten to know these characters so well, as fans it made us happy to think of them together and now they were making another game (which we definitely wanted!) but Drake’s final adventure just sounded so ominous! (Hell, even the title was ominous)

I'm going to go ahead right about now and say **SPOILERS** even though the game has been out for 3 years but y’know, some people might want to find out shit for themselves...

Thankfully, despite scenes of heartbreak that were beautifully acted with green room, motion capture and special effects, etc. (so lifelike!) the pair survived a pirate island and Nate’s white lies and truly got the happy ending they deserved. The final entry to the Uncharted series even got a little epilogue where you play as their 12 year old daughter (most sites say 11-13 year old, so hey) Cassie, at their perfect, dream beach house and she stumbles upon the keys to her dad’s (usually always) locked wardrobe which contains little treasures he picked up throughout his earlier adventures. The game ends with Nate and Elena heading off on a sailboat full of cold drinks and snacks, with Nathan starting to tell Cassie the story of the first Uncharted game (would bring a tear to a glass eye)

It was really - the perfect ending - these characters that you’d almost grown up with, saying their final goodbye to you. The softie in me pictures Cassie being blown away by all the crazy stories the pair would tell their daughter. Video games nowadays have just as much pull as that Netflix or Amazon show, it’s so easy to get attached to characters that you almost don’t want to let go, yet at the same time you don’t want them to be bled dry until all believability and all the ways you feel that you relate to them have faded and they’re reduced to a few key phrases...

So...what was the point in this post and what was to debate i hear you ask?

back in 2007 when the very first Uncharted was released, I was in a very dark place. I don’t really like talking about my depression and anxiety, not so much for the whole stigma around it but I usually find that once you open that door everybody starts walking on eggshells around you and treating you different. Maybe that’s just the anxiety playing up but I feel like things are different once you’ve told someone. Can’t really explain it well, even as I try to type it...

I didn’t leave the house except to go and come home from work, I found myself alienated from friends, even when they tried to get me to join their uni societies and such I just didn’t want to socialise with anyone at all really. I never told anybody at home how I was feeling as the whole I’ve had a good childhood train of thinking began. That and It’d be insulting to them. I kept to myself with many dark thoughts and didn’t do much at all. Then Uncharted came along. An exciting game with a great story and a confident main character. More and more I found myself coming out my shell the more I played. I guess you could say that I started channelling my inner Nathan Drake and before long my confidence returned and the D&A subsided...for a time...

fast forward 2 years to 2009 and MUCH had changed! I got back in touch with an old school friend from primary that I had lost touch with, had my good friends Stuart and Alan round a lot for dvd/game nights and also a girl had joined our friend group, Jenny. I was confident, outgoing and full of cheer. Not even work bothered me! It was safe to say that Jenny was flavour of the month after we’d gotten a bit closer (nothing ended up coming of it other than friendship. We still talk nowadays but she lives in Australia, married with a son and I'm very happy for her) Was out every week at Karaoke after work and Uncharted 2 rolled around giving us more Drake, Sully and Elena but also introducing the sexy character of Chloe Frazer among other memorable baddies. With this game I was really in a good place and all it did was further my confidence. The more I played these games, the more healthy I was it seemed. Probably sounds a strange thing to say but I guess it��s like art - everybody interprets things different.

Jump forward to November 2011 and Uncharted 3 comes out. Now I'm in a very different place altogether. Positively beaming with confidence (some might say overconfidence...I say to them, shaddap lol) and I have a girlfriend. My first girlfriend in 2 years (who would later become my now fiancée, Hannah) I still make time for my favourite game franchise because I'm in a distance relationship and every week my heart breaks and I cry floods of tears at having to leave my sweet girl to come home for work the next morning. Uncharted’s 3rd outing keeps me grounded, keeps me confident. I swear; Nathan Drake was my role model in young adulthood! Despite the feelings of loneliness I work, I play, I see Hannah, I play, I work, and so on. It doesn't seem as bad when I have something to distract me and that something was Uncharted. The fear that Sully was going to die in this game was very real and in points I was almost in tears. That “more or less” trustworthy old git we’d all come to love, he just couldn't die!

Jump on to 2016 and again different time, different place. Still with Hannah and now engaged, we’re saving up to buy a house. The friend’s dynamic has changed massively. I still see Stuart and Alan but now a blast from the past, Laura, came back into my life. We used to tear into each other in high school (mostly jokingly of course haha) but I always cared about her and when we reconnected we hit it off straight away like no time had passed! now she was getting married (still the best wedding I've been to!) me too - eventually - and we were and still are the best of confidantes to this day. I consider her one of my best friends in the whole world. Unfortunately in 2015 the darkness inside returned with the death of that friend i had gotten back in touch with back in 2009, Steven Borman. The thing is - we had chatted online a lot but in the 6 years we’d been back in touch we never got around to meeting up! Not once. In six years. Either he was working or I was, or I was at Hannah’s or he was at his girl’s...there was always something preventing us from meeting in person and then he died. I didn’t take it well...I have no shame in admitting that I went to a dark place; the darkest place if you catch my drift. It was so hard to process and deal with that there were a few days I didn’t go to work for fear of just exploding and taking my grief out on a member of the public. One of those days I wandered a graveyard and cried (how emo of me, right? haha)

I wouldn't say it passed. It still hurts to think about his loss and all the things that he won’t get to do but it dulled slightly over time. Thankfully a year later and Uncharted 4 was with us. It carried this theme of being bitter-sweet the whole way through (kind of like the end of Toy Story 3 if you know what I mean) and playing out that last, and somewhat more mature, outing though with its themes of love, loss, family and sacrifice, it really helped me find some perspective. I think it’s rare for a video game to do that, even in this day and age with such stories as Last of Us and Red Dead Redemption 2...

Had to throw in a GiF of Cassie (How adorbs is she) but I digress.

Sounds kind of weird to say that Uncharted, what some people see as just another duck and cover, 3rd person shooter, action/adventure game series, I see as my rock and something that has got me through many, many hard times! I can honestly say I think it will stay with me forever. It’s already encouraged and brought out in me the love of world travel and boosted my confidence in so many ways, I don’t even know what else to say other than this - as my sort of closing statement -

if you get pleasure from something, no matter the source, never be ashamed of it, never feel like you have to hide it. If something helps you then keep it close to your heart. For me, that is Uncharted. It has helped me through feelings of loneliness, isolation, depression and anxiety, through personal loss and the darkest of feelings, and though everything else in between.

Nathan Drake and his one liners, Sully’s sombre tones, Elena’s adorableness, Chloe’s...derrière (not even sorry...lol) and even Sam’s cynicism (Nate’s older brother, introduced in the last game) it’s kind of like having/being in a circle of friends that you always knew you could count on if that makes sense

Uncharted was always there for me and I hope someday, when I have kids, I can introduce them to the adventures of Drake and co. too.

Sic Parvis Magna, everybody! Sic Parvis Magna

(Greatness from small beginnings)

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neighbours-kid · 5 years

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June, July, Whatever

Yeah. Remember when I said I’d try and not slip up again, trying to post every month? Turned out great, didn’t it. Honestly, life has been so all over the place and at the same time absolutely uneventful lately, that it’s all a big ball of SOMETHING in my brain, and I don’t even know what happened when. But let’s see.

I started June the absolutely best way imaginable — falling into bed somewhat after midnight exhausted but so fucking proud and happy, after watching six hours of Good Omens. I have obviously not shut up about it since. My friends can attest to that.

And that is basically my June, to be honest. I yelled about Good Omens a lot, both in real life to my friends, in text messages, on twitter, tumblr and instagram.

Well…..I did also go to a wedding on June 1st, and to a convention in Cologne, Germany at the end of the month (which you can all read about here if you haven’t already), which was also really fucking exciting and cool and I had a wonderful time there.

I also watched the new and last season of Jessica Jones, which I think was pretty decent, but it did drag from time to time. I couldn’t binge through it, my attention span for it was close to non-existent. But it was fairly okay.

Not to forget, June was obviously also Pride Month, and I had a great pride with my friends, which was really good. It feels so incredibly liberating to surround yourself with people who are just like you, to find people who can relate to you and the other way around, to find, well, birds of a feather, if you will. I’m pretty sure there’s still glitter in my apartment from then, though. It’s the herpes of arts and craft, folks. Never goes away.

Oh, yeah, one other thing that happened in June, that is important to mention: I had my first appointment with a doctor about going on testosterone. I was really nervous about it, but she was incredibly lovely and helpful, and just a dream of a doctor, to be honest. I have my next appointment with her early in October, and between now and then I have to talk to a psychologist twice to get some papers, but overall she said there should be no problem with me being able to start taking testosterone from that next appointment on. Which I am very happy about. She was very uncomplicated and incredibly informative. I am currently still waiting for the psych person to send me a date, but if that doesn’t happen until next week, I’ll have to contact my doctor again, and she’ll figure it out. I am very excited that things are going forward now. Really gives me something to look forward to.

Now, July.

July was, well, not much different, to be honest. Lots of yelling about Good Omens, with equal amounts of yelling about just Michael Sheen (if you haven’t been privy to that, you should probably be glad). I did some work for two weeks — could, technically, have gone back to do even more, but I hate work and I have shit to do —, and watched a lot of stuff, as well.

I saw Spider-Man: Far From Home, which was really good, but also sort of destroyed my heart for a, well, moment. Well, moment might be a bit too short. You know what I mean. I just really miss Tony. Still breaks my heart.

I binged through two seasons of The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel, finally, which was really fucking great, can’t wait for the third season to come out. I’m really hoping they bring Benjamin back (I know, I’m biased because it’s Zac). I also watched the third part of La Casa de Papel/Money Heist which came out, and good GOD, if they don’t release a fourth part very soon, I’m gonna lose my shit with that cliffhanger they left us with. This show is so fucking good. Spanish TV, y’all. It’s incredible.

Then there’s one more thing I did in July. I started my deep-dive into Michael Sheen’s filmography. I have so far seen nine of his movies (two of which already fall into August though), and I become more amazed by the man’s talent after every new movie I see. He is a fucking acting chameleon, and I still can’t wrap my head around how just a bit of weight change, or a different hairstyle, or length of facial hair can change this man’s appearance so much that he becomes nearly unrecognisable. I do, however, say this. It’s getting better, now that I see the movies, and not just pictures or gifs of it. Before I started, I looked at pictures of him in, say, Underworld, and I could not see a single thing connecting this Michael to the Michael who played Aziraphale in Good Omens. There were no similarities. But now that I’ve seen one of the Underworld movies? I see it, I can see it now. Certain gestures or expressions give him away. But still. He is insanely talented and I wish I had a smidge of his shapeshifting talent, because it’s incredible and I am very much jealous.

So far, I’ve seen: Midnight in Paris (2014), Passengers (2016), Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009), The Adventurer: Curse of the Midas Box (2013), Bright Young Things (2003), Far from the Madding Crowd (2015), Beautiful Boy (2010), Laws of Attraction (2004), and Home Again (2017), with the last two, officially, falling already into August, but never mind that.

My favourite look of his was probably in Curse of the Midas Box (even though, y’all, his Miles in Bright Young Things? Excellent. Stunning. Absolutely beautiful), and my overall favourite movie, probably…….Passengers, even though I don’t like Jennifer Lawrence, and I don’t really care that much for Chris Pratt. But, well, Michael was excellent in it, and I love that little android he plays.

But I’ll shut up about Michael now, I will, likely, make a specific post about my current hyperfixation on him once I’ve actually seen everything he’s been in. And I mean everything, really.

Yeah…that’s my life for you, right there. Not much happening except watching a lot of stuff. I should be working on a seminar paper and start studying for two exams, but you know me. My scatterbrain mind is not very good at actually doing things I should be doing, when I should be doing them, and will probably only flip the switch to ProductivityTM once the deadlines start approaching.

That is all from me for now.

Be seeing ya.

#monthly blog #july #june #blog post #text post #good omens #michael sheen

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airadam · 4 years

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Episode 134 : Keeping Our Heads Up

"If you not at the table, then you on the menu."

- Jahi

This is not the summer we thought we were getting, but I'm going to at least partially overlook that and put some tracks in the mix that are perfect rolling music...even if we're only going to pick up essentials at the supermarket! There's some old(ish), some brand new, and plenty in-between. Oh yes - if your system has the bass turned up, turn it back down, or the third track up is going to destroy it...

The sad news came in after the music was already recorded, but Rest In Power to Malik B, best known for his work as a founding member of The Roots.

Twitter : @airadam13

Twitch : @airadam13

Playlist/Notes

Mistah F.A.B ft. Bun B, Slim Thug, Paul Wall, & Z-Ro : Commin' Down

From Oakland to Houston! The Bay Area veteran reaches down south for this driving anthem from "Son Of A Pimp, Part 2", and the respect is returned in spades. For me, Z-Ro steals the show right out of the gate on that first verse, with his trademark combination of humourous imagery, vocal range, and casual misanthropy! I expected the production to have come from a southern beatsmith too, but S.E. Trill is from Wichita in Kansas, firmly in the midwest.

Sitting Duck, otaam : Nights At The Beach

Bandcamp must have been reading my mind when it put "Chillhop Essentials Summer 2020" in my face, so I put a few quid in figuring that I'd like at least a few of the 25 tracks. That was definitely true, and this was one, produced by a duo that I've not yet found much info about...but I'll keep looking!

Le$ : Duckin'

Big tune out of Houston, with some of the most ridiculous bass I've heard in a while! Mr Rogers rolls together a classic R&B sample and as much low-end as he could find into a heavy backing for Le$ to work with. Not exactly a romantic anthem, but he does it well! The "Summer Madness" LP is well worth having a good listen to, it's almost like the more down-to-earth version of Curren$y's lifestyle content.

Beyonce ft. Jack White : Don't Hurt Yourself

Until trying to mix this, it wasn't obvious to me that the tempo wanders a little bit! It's low-speed but has sections highlighted by stripped-down double-time drums, followed by those heavy rocked-out segments - not the kind of sound many would associate with Beyonce, but she's always been versatile. The "Lemonade" LP is a great demonstration, with stuff ranging from this to straight R&B, to country! This is a great track with her clearly not here for the nonsense, taking her vocals to a really raw place.

Run The Jewels ft. Danny Brown : Hey Kids (Bumaye)

If you're looking for rappers to be jumping out there defending Elon Musk and the likes, you'd better look elsewhere! Killer Mike goes at the billionaire class in the first verse, and every MC keeps the intensity level up regardless of the specifics of their content. El-P on the beat, of course, on this selection from "Run The Jewels 3".

Mega Ran ft. Richie Branson & Storyville : O.P.

Mega Ran's career continues to grow, which is a testament to his skills and a karmic reward for how nice he is to everyone! That said, this track from 2015's "RNDM" has him and his crew going at the haters in fine style. His second verse is definitely the best of the three, and features one of the best breaks of the fourth wall I can remember in I don't know how long! Ran's longtime musical partner Lost Perception contributes the banging video game-inspired beat with crazy low end.

Agallah : Power Boats

Kind of grimy, despite the title making you think of open waters! Brooklyn's own Agallah produces the vast majority of the stuff you hear him rapping on (with good reason), and this particular beat is on "Propain Campaign Presents Agallah - The Instrumentals Vol.1".

OutKast ft. Cool Breeze and Big Gipp : Decatur Psalm

Taking it to what is still my favourite OutKast LP, "ATLiens", with the only track not to include Andre. Bracketing Big Boi's verse are two other members of the Dungeon Family, telling tales of the streets of the ATL. Organized Noize on production, of course.

State Property : It's Not Right

It's been a long time since the breakout days of Just Blaze and Kanye at Roc-A-Fella, and this track definitely brings back memories of that era. Just Blaze did a great job conjuring up the right level of melancholy for this track from the self-titled LP/soundtrack from this Philadelphia-centred crew. On the mic are Freeway, Young Chris, and Sparks, with Beanie Sigel bringing it home.

Meyhem Lauren & Harry Fraud ft. $bags : Brunch At The Breakers

The 2018 "Glass" EP had some great tracks on it, but left me wanting to hear more - clearly, they were holding out on us a little, because the recent "Glass 2.0" is built from tracks that didn't make the initial release! It was a tough choice between this and "Steamed Monkfish (Remix)" to see what made it onto the episode, but the gliding sample and overall feel of the beat ended up being the decider. I won't give away the sample, but as familiar as it seemed on listening here...I don't think I've ever heard the record before.

Above The Law : My World

The 1996 "Time Will Reveal" album was the fourth straight gem from Above The Law, and this track is one of my favourites. The late KMG takes the first verse, and Cold 187um the second, as well as showing out on the production in a major way. The female vocal on the hook is uncredited, but definitely adds onto the flavour. This is a track to roll slow to.

Massive Attack : Weather Storm

This nice instrumental cut from "Protection" is not one often talked about, but it's so good. Taking a great sample, letting it breathe, and working around it just enough is an art and one that this Bristol crew definitely mastered.

Matteo Getz & Termanology : Summer In The City

Massachusetts connection here with the producer and Lo-head Matteo Getz cooking up a beat for Lawrence's Termanology, an MC I feel is often underrated. This is taken from last year's release "The Getz Collection", which I think might have to be a pickup based on this.

Gang Starr ft. Jeru The Damaja : From A Distance

Still can't believe we got another Gang Starr LP last year, and to have Jeru as a guest takes it back to the "Daily Operation" days! Like most tracks on the album, this is fairly short, but both Guru and Jeru get the job done over a signature Preemo beat - check the contrast on alternating bars between the lush strings and the almost white-noise stabs.

Timeless Truth : Wavelength

Nothing but the raw boom-bap on this! Large Professor is responsible for the beat (the very sharp-eared would have picked that up without me even saying anything), while Solace and OPrime39 share mic duties, culminating in splitting the final verse down the middle. "Cold Wave" is an album for those who want the uncut.

Enemy Radio : 2020

If you hadn't heard, Enemy Radio is the stripped-down, sound system version of Public Enemy, with Chuck D joined on the mic by Jahi and long-time PE DJ Lord Aswod on the turntables. Their new LP "Loud Is Not Enough" is out in parallel with material from their original lineup, but allows a different emphasis. This year has often felt like the world is ending, and Chuck D is the #1 MC for that time! Notice how short the actual verses from he and Jahi are on this C-Doc-produced track - they not only paint a picture of the darkness of 2020 but do so with incredible lyrical efficiency.

[Kev Brown] DJ Jazzy Jeff : Da Rebirth (Instrumental)

It's been a long time (almost 100 episodes) since I played the vocal version, so here's the instrumental in case you forgot how ill the beat is :) Fairly early work by Kev Brown, in his days collaborating with the A Touch of Jazz camp - this is on "The Magnificent EP".

KinKai ft. Children of Zeus : Top Down

There hasn't been as much road trip time as we'd like in the COVID reality, but Mancunians are nothing if not appreciative of good weather when it comes! KinKai's new LP "A Few Pennies Worth" is a great release for the season, and this single was a hell of a way to precede it - bringing in Manchester's own Children of Zeus for a summer anthem produced beautifully by Paya.

Please remember to support the artists you like! The purpose of putting the podcast out and providing the full tracklist is to try and give some light, so do use the songs on each episode as a starting point to search out more material. If you have Spotify in your country it's a great way to explore, but otherwise there's always Youtube and the like. Seeing your favourite artists live is the best way to put money in their pockets, and buy the vinyl/CDs/downloads of the stuff you like the most!

Check out this episode!

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renaramblesaboutcomics · 6 years

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Wednesday Roundup 29.11.18

Another week another grab bag of comics in what might be one of the highest rated weeks of the Roundup since I started over a year ago! But how does everyone hold up? How do they all compare? I’m asking for dramatizing’s sake but genuinely there’s nothing in this week that isn’t immensely enjoyable if they even remotely pique your interests. GREAT week for comics, everyone. GG.

Tesladyne’s Atomic Robo, Image’s Black Magick, DC’s Super Sons, IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters II, IDW’s Transformers: Lost Light

Tesladyne’s Atomic Robo and the Spectre of Tomorrow #2 Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener, Anthony Clark, Jeff Powell

There is a certain amount of dry wit and scientific community knowledge that is instrumental to getting the full experience out of the clever writing and deceptively simplistic design of Atomic Robo, and for the past few months I’ve been making a solid attempt to evaluate these comics and Robo himself based on the entertainment received without much of that. And, in all honesty, the more I’ve looked into this the more I wonder if that’s the wrong approach for “unbiased�� evaluation to begin with.

For example, I’ve been very firm on my description of Usagi Yojimbo as being one of those great comics that only gets more and more enriching as you grow a personal interest in history, Japanese culture, and mythologizing -- it’s far enough removed from our actual realities and accessible enough that I recommend it to people who don’t have those interests, but I find that those interests add so much more to the experience. The simple designs, the consistency, the way the narrative is built in episodic spurts more than long form narrative -- those are all reasons I can in good faith recommend these comics to people outside of niche interests, but those niche interests add so much to any reading that it’s difficult to really express why anyone would want to read without so much as acknowledging it.

That all said, this particular issue continues that same level of quality and intrigue, but also rewards the emotional investment you may have in the characters involved. PersonallyI relate a lot more to Robo’s sense of self-exile and reclusive depression which only causes more and more problems to pile up far more than I’d have ever thought I would, and I don’t think I’d be alone in that. There’s also the long time readers’ reward in seeing consequences to that stollen crystal from Doctor Dinosaur’s island ages ago. All great stuff which is only more greatly emphasized by the creative use of familiar real world scientific organizations and entities wrapped up in this bizarre and surreal reality of Atomic Robo.

Image’s Black Magick (2015-present) #9 Greg Rucka, Nicola Scott

Sometimes the real value of storytelling lies less in identifying the complete package and more in being able to identify the way it weaves multiple elements and even genres at once to provide a new kind of satisfying narrative. And it’s in that way that I think Black Magick has so quickly become not only one of my favorite Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott comics, but one of my favorite recent publications in general.

Black Magick follows a noir-style crime drama in structure, but its embrace of the supernatural and, especially, in witching stories provide the sort of edge that makes the tiredness of the former genre feel fresh even in the heavily saturated market for procedurals we have currently, while the latter feels completely reborn from that small but influential boom we felt in the 90s. I have never been closer to re-marathoning The Craft, Practical Magic and Charmed outside of the Halloween season. But each new issue of Black Magick brings me that step closer.

This issue also happens to follow the very specific to this week trend of leaning heavily on emotional stakes to really pull itself and its characters above even the thickest of genre settings however, and Black Magick specifically manages that while maintaining an incredibly tight hold on Rowan’s perspective. Which is fascinating because on reread you really realize how much the POV shifts away from Rowan and onto the other characters and their subplots but in reflection it all feels like it’s only in service to Rowan’s main story more than anything else.

Nicola Scott continues to prove she is perhaps the most gifted and, really, the most prolific of comic book artists in the modern era and I maintain that seeing the true extent of her talents is best assessed by reading this comic and just allowing yourself to be blown away by it all.

This issue also gets major props for introducing a familiar. Good, comic. Perhaps not as action filled or breathtaking as the last issue which was a nail biter from start to finish, but most certainly deserving of those 4/5 stars.

DC’s Super Sons (2017-present) Annual #1 Peter J. Tomasi, Paul Pelletier, Cam Smith, HI-FI

If you’re one of those people -- and let me absolutely clear that it is more than understandable to be one of these people -- who find super pets and the absolute general ridiculousness of a storyline that involves super animals in any capacity with a timeline that makes no sense and the only real dialogue that matters being literal growls barks and yips, this is not an issue worth your $4.99, you’ll hate it and be annoyed with people like me screaming from the rooftops that you should buy it and read it and love it. And that is completely and utterly fine and reasonable.

I am not fine or reasonable, however, and this is literally the most rewarding $4.99 I’ve spent on a comic in ages. Because no joke there were several times while I was liveblogging this issue both on my main blog and to my friends in PMs that I was literally in tears crying with laughter because

because

Holy shit guys.

In recent years a continued criticism I have carried for superhero comics is that there is a huge tone problem, in that there is a genre’s worth of tones and atmospheres that could be played off of to give at least each individual book if not each individual issue its own feeling and its own intrigue that would set it apart from the rest of the line that given week. DC, especially, has contributed greatly to this tone problem because as I’ve said many times, there was about five years there where even the color palettes for their comics had no variation between them. And it was maddening.

So to have something goofy, to have something different, and to have it be fun, enjoyable, full of twists and turns, and not so damn determined to take itself beyond seriously, it makes this comic throwback feel like a breath of fresh air in the most necessary of ways.

And I should be clear, I don’t mean that this comic is for everyone, or that Super Sons as a comic in general doesn’t manage to strike that cord a lot since it really is one of the most enjoyable comics DC has put out in years, but this really felt like a treat, an additional, ridiculous, hilarious story set so far apart from what’s come before. It’s greatly enjoyable. Genuinely deserve of my coveted 5/5 stars.

IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters II (2017) #5 (of 5) Erik Burnham, Tom Waltz, Dan Shoening, Charles Paul Wilson III, Luis Antonio Delgado

We finally come to an end of this second giant mashup of Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, truly the sort of framework and pairing that is as old as time, and I get to reward everyone’s patience with me reviewing these for a month an a half straight with some final thoughts of sorts.

I compliment both of these writers quite a bit for their respective contributions and the absolute mastery they both have shown for the voices of their respective franchises, but as this week is pretty well summed up with Rena Waxes Philosophically And Is Old, I think both of our times are better spent here by pointing out something a bit different that really came together with this issue. And that’s that for how pitch perfect these writers are for capturing the long expected voices of these beloved characters, the real remarkable compliment I can give them is how they have uniquely captured and redefined these voices to really make them their own.

Despite how much my childhood might have desired these team ups (and believe me, it so did) the fact is that these interactions and these relationships are utterly a modern invention, and what could easily fail outside of the concept states instead flourishes with us here specifically because they are sticking to their guns and not always angling for the obvious route with these interactions. That’s what makes all of this so fascinating and so rewarding as a fan.

In comparison to the predecessor, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters II does not have as tight of a storyline with a steady but consistent pacing and understanding of where it’s going. But I think because that set up was taking care of in the original these five issues allowed for more experimentation and more concentration on character development and fun scenarios. So if you’re far more invested in character interactions and in comics taking full advantage of the outrageous and unique tone of its medium, there’s probably all the more for you to enjoy with this compared to the first. But at the same time, it would be lying to say that the main driving plot and stakes, with Darius Dun’s ghost and the Fast Forward Evil Turtles-lite trying to harvest souls in a complicated and underused concept didn’t come off as overall a bit weaker than the original.

All that said, ultimately this comic is a joy for fans and it seems to be aimed quite specifically at that audience either way. And in that case I have to give it my highest regards.

IDW’s Transformers: Lost Light (2016-present) #11 James Roberts, Jack Lawrence, Joana Lafuente

Ever since the last arc of James Robert’s parent series, More Than Meets the eye, there’s been a few gaps in the concept of what happened on the Lost Light during and after the mutiny, whether or not the crew saw the Rod Squad’s las message, and especially curious to people like me who can’t help themselves but love our affable and entirely flawed co-Captain Rodimus, what was his final request for his burial and what not since we saw the rest of the crew’s.

And in the second part of this “Mutineer Trilogy” that we have for Lost Light, we are at long last getting our answers to many of those questions. And for a reveal that was a year coming, the Lost Light manages to pack all the twists, turns, and punches that we could hope to expect!

It’s fascinating to see Getaway’s sense of grandeur when it comes to himself, his plans, and really the whole driving force with the mutiny, but I really find that where Roberts’ writing and where we as readers get the most out of is the interesting and very layered sense that Roberts has for the lore of the Transformers. It feels like every subtle piece of dialogue, whether it concerns lore and mythology of the universe or not, is really weaved throughout with a submersion in this fictional culture. And that, especially, is really revealing here. It’s a very rewarding way to handle lore and I greatly appreciate it.

One that does make me apprehensive with the turns Lost Light has taken most recently, however, is that moral grayness sometimes feels really blurred with a light take or even somewhat forgiving light given to what are undeniably and outright stated as fascist and genocidal elements of the Transformers’ past, especially Megatron. Having this issue completely dedicated to Getaway’s perspective while tackling these themes doesn’t really help because he is most egregiously one of the most villainous and traitorous characters the series has tackled, but while it feels like he’s only using the aghast feelings of the crew toward Megatron, ultimately he’s the only one who gives a speech against Megatron’s past of genocide and fascism while also taking over in the most truly reprehensible and fascist ways possible himself. This is further blurred by having some very topical buzz words like “fake news” uttered by Getaway in a... lbr pretty nonsensical way in-universe, but then have him going around imprisoning or hideously killing all of the crew which doesn’t agree with him.

I’m basically waiting for Roberts to fully address all of this in the story but right now it feels very much like “both sides are extreme and bad” mentality that, given Roberts’ politics and statements irl, I don’t think is what he ultimately wants this story to be coming away as, but I’m nervous and would like for things to tread lightly considering the current environment.

ALL of my apprehensions and concerns out of the way, this is still a fascinating and ultimately fantastic comic that I really truly enjoy and would love to see more of because if Roberts’ Transformers is guilty of anything it’s definitely guilty of raising my expectations and setting that bar so high because of how good and how complicated and interesting all of it ca be in the right hands.

Hey there! We finish up another pretty fun, if not quick, week in comics with lots of stories and characters, and another pretty great time from yours truly. And if you enjoy these write-ups or anything else I do whether it be the Roundups, my Rambles, my personal creative projects, or you’re interested in my upcoming podcast, you can help contribute through donations to my Ko-Fi, Patreon, or PayPal. For as little as $1 per project, you make all of this possible.

You could also support me by going to my main blog, @renaroo, where I’ll soon be listing prices and more for art and writing commissions.

RenaRoo Ko-Fi | RenaRoo Patreon | RenaRoo PayPal

#Rena Roundups #Wednesday Spoilers #SPOILERS #Atomic Robo and the Spectre of Tomorrow #Black Magick #Super Sons (2017 )#Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters II #Transformers: Lost Light (2016 )

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livelikebrent · 6 years

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5th Annual Carve 4 Cancer Winter Sports & Music Festival

“And here you are living despite it all.” I’ve read this quote by Rupi Kaur (I adore her words) dozens of times since Brent has passed. Despite everything that has happened, here I am. Here YOU are. Living, carrying on and still standing. When Brent passed away last July, Carve 4 Cancer was the last thing I wanted to think about or put my energy towards. Honestly, I didn’t have much to begin with and I didn’t want to have any additional responsibilities. I was worried. I was worried how Brent’s family, friends and loved ones were. It was natural to shift my emotions and concerns from Brent to these people that were so close to him. I decided to put the energy I did have towards traveling and writing to help with my grieving process. But despite it all, the Carve Crew carried on. The tragic event gave the team inspiration to help ignite #LiveLikeBrent and start the planning process for Brent’s biggest and best winter festival to date. This isn’t a traditional blog entry from a Live Like Brent trip...but it’s still a worthy post.

It was probably around mid-October when I finally came to and was ready for the conference calls, email chains, text messages and solicitation for the February 3rd event. But in the mean time I met with the Crew and we visited Blue Mountain Ski Resort which has become our new home and part of the family.

After visiting Blue we became inspired. The venue was a complete upgrade compared to our previous years, the staff was giving us an overwhelming amount of support when it was only September. While it was extremely saddening to not have Brent present, I think it’s safe to say that we were all grateful to have one another going into the 5th year for this event and we were going to put our heart and soul into it.

Weeks leading up to the event I think I felt almost every emotion possible. I’d find myself beyond upset that at 28 going on 29 years old I found myself honoring a boyfriend that was no longer on this Earth. No one should ever have to do that. No mother or father should have to bury their son. I relived the last week, days and hours in the hospital I spent with Brent. I found myself angry at times and reminded myself patience is a virtue. I just wanted it to be a perfect and exciting day for Brent’s family, friends and people that would encounter Carve 4 Cancer for the first time. I found myself anxious. I would catch myself in these emotions and try to check myself. I found myself excited looking forward to seeing everyone, to release the new merch and have the event at the new venue. I was stressed and probably any other emotion you could think of to add to the list too. Some people would say, “That’s what putting an event on is like, it’s stressful.” Yes and no. I’ve been planning events professionally for 8 years now and I’m one of the calmest event planners you will meet. I’ve been told by previous bosses that they’ve never seen me lose my cool or physically show stress - especially day of an event. One boss even told me she wanted to see me lose my cool. Sure, some of you may have lost me in a conversation on an event day as I have a thousand thoughts flying through my head like a sponsor I need to check on, or thank a donor for attending, or adjust the placement of an auction item...but I’ve never broken down. But having had this all happen and having this team along side of me has also been helpful. We’re made up of event planners, snowboarders familiar with the scene, handymen and friends that will help wherever it is needed.

I took the Friday off before the event and checked into the rental for the weekend. I wanted to get a day of snowboarding in with a trip to Colorado the following weekend. Plus, we set-up the evening prior. I had not been on my board since winter of 2016 when Brent was somewhat well enough to carve down the mountain. The winter of 2017 was the ONLY ski season he had missed. I know that upset him. But the house we stayed in was awesome with a view of the mountain, hot tub and right around the corner from Blue. Brent and I never snowboarded on Carve 4 Cancer weekends. By the time we got to the mountain to set-up we were exhausted, woke up the next day for the event and then always intended on snowboarding the day after...but always just wanted to go home and relax by that point.

Brent always wanted to help others...in any way, shape or form. I think everyone knows that and that impacted a lot of individuals. When we started planning the 2018 Winter Festival, I started receiving texts, Facebook messages and phone calls on how Brent’s friends could help. Some felt so compelled to get involved...Adam joined the team and created wooden awards for the mountain, Brendan wanted to create the day of event poster and refurbished an old chair lift , Matt offered to have his band, Fake Flowers Real Dirt, perform at the event (they ROCKED it by the way) and our Ambassador program gained several new members. Everyone wanted to help - Brent always wanted more friends to become hands on...I’m glad several decided to because they made the event that much better.

Day of the event Brent would be off shaking hands, kissing babies, interviewing and stopping by the sponsor booths to thank them while I’d be wondering around the event, troubleshooting where needed, checking on raffles/volunteers and trying to capture the day when I could. It was rare that we were together. And if we were together, he was introducing me to dozens of people. But I always made sure we could snap a photo together...

Carve 4 Cancer 2015 - 372 days before re-diagnosis

Carve 4 Cancer 2016 - 6 days before re-diagnosis

Carve 4 Cancer 2017 - 358 days after re-diagnosis

Carve 4 Cancer 2018 - Day 203 without Brent

I was never one to really take a lot of photos. Sure, every once in a while. But ever since Brent got sick we started taking more together. I don’t know how I feel about that. I think it’s a realization I (maybe we) had...memories are wonderful but it’s nice to look back at a photo you may have forgotten about. As technology advances people aren’t “living in the moment” and are staring at their screens. But I think there’s a balance you can find.

Last year’s, 2017 winter festival was a tough one for Brent. I can’t help but look back and reflect on that event now a year later. We had JUST made it back to from being in New York City for about 5 months to Philadelphia. He so badly wanted to make it back home to be at Carve. He was in an immense amount of pain that day, completely wiped, he was highly embarrassed that he needed to use the bathroom so frequently and more so that he couldn’t control his bowel due to his graft versus host disease. He wanted to party with everyone but knew he couldn’t because his body simply wouldn’t allow him to. Regardless, he muscled through it as much as he could. He did that a lot. I don’t think many people realized how much pain he was in or how exhausted he actually was...that’s because he pushed himself to do so damn much. You’d see him and think, “Well, he made it out here and he’s doing XYZ so he must be doing okay or on the upswing.” When you call Brent a “warrior” or “brave”...you really have no idea. I don’t think there’s a word yet for what Brent was because he was so much more than that.

Did I think that was going to be Brent’s last Carve 4 Cancer? No way. When his roommate, Ryan, and I carried him down his apartment staircase on July 5, 2017. He asked me, “Ais, am I dying?” I told him, “No way. You’re going to be fine.” When taking a step back and looking at it...We all knew it was bad. We all knew it was scary. I mean, it was goddamn CANCER. But we all thought it would all be “okay.”

We were all busy little bees the day of the event on Saturday. This year I found myself taking Brent’s place in where I was the one catching up with his family, family friends, people introducing themselves to me, taking interviews while also troubleshooting here and there with the team.

Photo by Noche Studio

“He would’ve loved the event.” and “He’s so proud of all of you.” are comments we’ve been receiving over and over again. It’s downright sad. It’s bitter sweet. But it’s humbling as all hell to see the love, support and hard work pay off. I’m confident in those words and will give my entire team an ego boost by saying this was the best damn Carve 4 Cancer event we’ve had...not only in fundraising dollars, but aesthetically, musically (check out Lawrence who blew the roof off of the Vista Ballroom) and everything in between. I mean, we had a beer named after Brent with Yards called Uncle Brent’s Brew! We had Murf Meyer as our emcee! We are a 501c3 non-profit and this year we were as professional as a snowboard/ski charity could be. Not to mention we were published in Method Snowboarding Magazine...

If you didn’t make it out to the 2018 Carve 4 Cancer Winter Sports and Music Festival, I hope we will get to see you next year. Without Brent, I do understand it’s not the same. But you’re support is so appreciated by myself, the Carve Crew and the Evans family. We’re excited to continue to expand Carve and raise funds for the mission. But shredding blood cancers starts with you.

#Carve4Cancer #C4C5 #LiveLikeBrent #Blue Mountain #Blue Mountain Ski Resort #Yards Brewing Company #Palmerton #Ski #Snowboard #Blood Cancer

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freshginandtonic · 4 years

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I Just Haven't MET You Yet: Thoughts on the Super Bowl of Fashion

The Met Gala is the the Olympics of fashion. As my title suggests, it has been called the Super Bowl of fashion. Athletes train for years - buffed and polished to an inch of their life to go out there and achieve excellence in sport. For the Met it’s excellence in fashion. Once a year, we (or at least my mother and myself) wait with bated breath to see what everyone wears.

As many of us are currently, I am working from home at the minute - today before I started my commute (15 seconds from my bed to my desk), instead of activewear I decided to put on my designated fancy ass velvet dress I bought about four years ago that I now wear to any vaguely formal occasion (with an abundance of tape to deal w how low cut it is) - and a puffer jacket (it’s cold af in my room) to commemorate the gala.

This year’s theme was supposed to be ‘About Time: Fashion and Duration’ I googled this concept and found the following information on the Met’s website: “it will explore how clothes generate temporal associations that conflate past, present, and future. Virginia Woolf will serve as the "ghost narrator" of the exhibition.”

My thoughts on this are as follows: firstly, ‘About Time’ is a great film if you haven’t seen it. Secondly, clothes conflating the past present and future - it’s a big yes from me. Thirdly, can Virginia Woolf serve as the ghost narrator of my entire life? What an idea.

The co-chairs this year were going to be Anna Wintour, Meryl Streep, Emma Stone, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Nicolas Ghesquiere. I mean, that list in itself is like a dream party list because you just know you’ll be getting a Streep-Stone-Miranda musical number in between drinks and dinner. I also don’t really know what being a co-chair of the event MEANS, but I’m guessing its some kind of vague organisational role where but you defer to Anna on everything - basically a school captain and principal set up.

For those of you who want a quick crash course in the, who, the what and the why I’m even talking about this gala thing here’s the tea: The Met Gala is the annual fundraising gala for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in New York City and marks the opening of the Costume Institute's annual fashion exhibit. Vogue have just done a video to explain the history so pls get enlightened.

However if you want more than 6 minutes and 50 seconds of how it all works, look no further than the 2016 documentary ‘The First Monday in May’. The film covers the months leading up to the 2015 Gala and the night itself. The theme that year was ‘China: Through The Looking Glass’, and it was all about the impact of Chinese design on Western fashion over the centuries.

The film is a huge eye opener into the pressure, time constraints, and sheer elbow grease that goes into the event. It’s also the closest thing to The Devil Wears Prada I’ve seen since ‘The September Issue’ . Anna Wintour flits around the museum with her sunnies and her giant cup of Starbucks, and scenes of Anna’s assistant and event organisers excessively vetting people from the guest list (“Josh Hartnett? What has he done lately?”) are amazing but also can you IMAGINE watching it and seeing them bitch about you?! Quelle nightmare.

Also if you’re a nosy Parker like me fun fact you can pause on the shots of the seating charts, and see who’s sitting next to who - I managed to squint and see Baz Luhrmann next to Jennifer Lawrence, Amal Clooney next to Tom Ford, and‘Jared Leto TBC’. How ominous.

As I mentioned earlier the show I work on covers the Met Gala - and yes, thanks to the time difference ‘the First Tuesday in May’ really doesn’t have the same snazzy ring to it. So come last year we were prepared to report on it - in 2020, I recalled it fondly, and also stressfully with my bosses video calling me at 7:30 this morning to remind me it was Met Gala Day and giving me a triple bypass in the process.

From my memory, the Queen of Camp at the 2019 gala was Lady Gaga - I remember watching her pink carpet entrance at work (I was the Met Gala producer that day - definitely not a real thing) and realising that every time I looked up at my screen she had a different outfit on - I believe there were four in total, which gave me palpitations at the time as I had to have three separate slabs of overlay to show the transition between her looks - but now a full year later I can appreciate her sheer artistry.

The 2019 theme was ‘Camp: Notes on Fashion.’ The exhibit was inspired by Susan Sontag's 1964 essay that defines camp as "love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” It’s something that Sontag describes as “esoteric - something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques.” It seems to me that’s the best way to describe the Gala itself? Something out of the ordinary, opulent and pretty much unattainable to normal people looking in from the outside that manages to seduce us all every year.

There were so many great looks last year I can’t possibly go through them all, so quick honourable mentions to the following: Harry Styles , Ezra Miller, Lily Collins, Irina Shayk, Kim Kardashian, and Hamish Bowles to name far too few. Also some great online stuff came out as well: this movie trailer for the event and this brilliant video showing how the Vogue social media team handled the event.

Despite all this, I have to say that yes, while the ‘Camp’ year was, indeed shit hot, and I lived for every moment of it, my favourite year was in fact 2017.

The theme was ‘Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination’, and after 13 years of Catholic education and living with a deeply religious grandmother who keeps a bunch of icons around our house I can firmly say Alleluia and Thanks Be to God. The main thing I remember from this year was this amazing video that Vogue put up (and apparently took down as I had to find it on Facebook) showing celebrities flouncing around the museum in their finery.

My friend Georgie and I were going through our favourite looks from previous years over Zoom last night, and while she had gone for looks from like 1974 to present day, literally all of mine were from 2017 bc I loved them all so much. Plus looking through I remembered that Shawn Mendes and Hailey (now) Bieber were a couple for about 30 seconds.

I must particularly make mention of Zendaya, Emilia Clarke, Greta Gerwig, Ariana Grande, Bella Hadid, Rihanna, Kate Bosworth, Blake Lively, Lily Collins, Kim Kardashian, Chadwick Boseman, Cardi B and Priyanka Chopra who, although perennially irritating since becoming Priyanka Chopra Jonas, cannot be ignored for her excellent use of red velvet here. As you can probably tell I found it REALLY hard to narrow that all down.

I am someone who decided at least five years ago that they would one day attend the gala (I haven’t quite figured out why I would be invited, but even Kim Kardashian started as a plus one so there’s hope for me yet). Every year I look at red carpet as my altar, the stars the saints and angels (yeesh, can you tell I went to Catholic school - and I actually believe this garbage). I don’t know how a short walk up some stairs to a museum became so fraught with power but there it is. Every time I go out in something approximating a ballgown (bringing it back to the red dress, people) I imagine how I would walk, who I would talk to, what my hair would look like (very important), and who I would have at my table (slightly less important than hair). And of course, addressing Anna (through her all things were made, for us and for our salvation, maker of Heaven and Earth, of all that is seen and unseen etc).

Maybe she would look at me and nod approvingly with a wry smile (please refer to the end scene of the Devil Wears Prada to see exactly how this would happen, but hopefully the smile would be a bit warmer than what you would give an ex-employee) and I would walk on, secure in the knowledge that Anna and I had connected on a deeply spiritual level. Then I imagine I would head straight to the bar to recover.

NOW KEEP READING HUN

A quick note for people who want to read fun stuff/watch fun stuff about the Met Gala to compensate for this trash year, here are some funky links to what Vogue has going on:

Anna Wintour Addresses the Met Gala and Florence + The Machine Performs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HptQEYkMrVQ

Thinking of the Met on a Not-So-Typical First Monday in May https://www.vogue.com/article/moment-with-the-met-vogue-global-conversations

25 Years of Met Gala Themes: A Look Back at Many First Mondays in May https://www.vogue.com/article/met-gala-themes

Only at the Met: An Oral History of the World’s Most Glamorous Gala https://www.vogue.com/article/the-complete-met-gala-oral-history

See the Costume Institute’s New (Though Postponed) Show About Time https://www.vogue.com/article/costume-institute-about-time-preview

The Most Unforgettable Met Gala Beauty Looks—According to the Hair and Makeup Artists Behind Them. https://www.vogue.com/article/met-gala-makeup-artists-hair-stylists-instagram

Naomi Campbell Breaks Down 30 Years’ Worth of Met Gala Magic https://www.vogue.com/article/naomi-campbell-life-in-looks-met-gala-video

A Look Back at a Decade of Stunning Met Gala Interiors https://www.vogue.com/slideshow/a-look-back-at-a-decade-of-stunning-met-gala-interiors

Sarah Jessica Parker Shares a Playlist Inspired by the Met Gala Theme ‘About Time: Fashion and Duration’ https://www.vogue.com/article/sarah-jessica-parker-met-gala-about-time-playlist

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thinktosee · 5 years

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JOURNAL TO DAVID – 39TH MONTH – A REMEMBRANCE

Flowers arranged by Edna this morning

Dear David, my Son,

Today is the 39th month. Nothing changes. We remember and honour you every moment. You are much loved.

This morning, we heard from Sara that she had landed safely in Lima, Peru. She flew from Santiago, Chile. Your sister has been touring Argentina, Chile and now Peru for the last 5 weeks. She is learning a good deal about these places. We are students after all in this life. We are most grateful for this privilege which Sara is blessed with.

A couple of days ago, I came across an essay by the award-winning journalist, Robert Fisk. It is a story of remembrance. An eternal love. The love of a child and later, a woman for her grandfather. A love which transcends the ages. This story is amazing. It too is heart-breaking. War is after all senseless and tragic. You, David had written a number of poems about the subject of war. Pacifism is the bravest act. You proved this with your life.

I am reproducing Mr. Fisk’s story as reported in the The Independent. We shall read it aloud to you during prayers tonight :

“On the banks of the Tigris, the lost grave of Scottish shepherd David Bell takes us deep into Iraq’s bloody past

A barren war cemetery in Amara houses the dead from the allies’ most calamitous defeat in the First World War. It was a request from a canny grandmother in Lincolnshire that took me there.

· Robert Fisk, Amara, southern Iraq @indyvoices

This is the story of an elderly lady in Lincolnshire, a long-dead Scottish shepherd and a kindly Shia Muslim in southern Iraq. First, the lady. Moira Jennings, who is now 87, wrote to me from her home in England when I was covering the aftermath of the disastrous – and illegal – 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. We would exchange letters several times in the coming years. But her words are more eloquent than mine:

“My Grandfather was killed on 22nd April 1916 and is buried in Amara War Cemetery, Iraq. He was in the Black Watch, left the farm in Scotland where he was a Shepherd and never returned, as did so many men in the First World War. As a child I spent a lot of time with my Grandmother who had my Grandfather’s medals in a frame on her wall. I asked her about them and she told me he had been killed in Mesopotamia by the Turks. To a child this made a lasting impression on my mind and I’ve tried to find out more.”

Private David Cameron Bell of the 2nd Battalion, the Black Watch (Royal Highlanders), came from Fife – his parents were called Henry and Catherine, that much we know – and his wife, Moira’s grandmother, was called Annie (originally Annie Anderson). She was from Frithfield, Anstruther, which is also in Fife.

Moira Jennings, a canny lady whose articulate fury at the Bush-Blair invasion matched her horror at the bloodshed of the Great War which ended 14 years before she was born, knows the story of what was “Mesopotamia” all too well. When he was killed, Private Bell was already 41 – a truly “old soldier” by the standards of the Great War in which my own father fought in France (and survived) at the age of just 19.

In a series of military actions, the British – including thousands of Indian troops – fought their way up the Tigris river towards Baghdad in 1915, but were finally surrounded by the Ottoman Turks on a plateau of land between Kut and Amara under their self-satisfied but ineffectual general, Charles Townshend.

Despite efforts by Lawrence of Arabia and others to bribe the Turks to release the British army, the trapped soldiers were reduced, under constant shellfire, to eating horses, and even rats to survive. In the reduced front line, cholera broke out. There were desertions, and when Townshend finally surrendered on 29 April 1916 around 4,000 British dead were packed into the Amara cemetery beside the fetid waters of the Tigris. It has rightly been called the worst defeat of the allies in the First World War.

This deeply depressing tale of military collapse was only compounded when the Turks forced the British survivors to undertake a death march up through what is now Iraq, through Mosul, into eastern Turkey and Anatolia, where they died – again by the thousand – of cholera and overwork, often close by the dying “survivors” of the 1915 Armenian genocide.

General Townshend, however, was taken up the Tigris by boat, treated with princely courtesy in Constantinople and – speaking little of his own troops – returned to Britain expecting to be treated as a war hero. Like so many of his kind, he later became an MP and an “expert” on the Arab world.

But here is Moira Jennings, writing to me now in 2012. “…I know my Grandfather ‘fell’ and his mate bent down and took his wallet to bring home to my Grandmother, so he didn’t die of Cholera. I heard all this from my Gran and its [sic] stayed with me all these years. My Gran was very bitter towards the Turks, understandably. I feel sad that my Grandfather was killed and didn’t come back to his family as my Gran’s life was very hard with five children to feed and having to leave the farm. She remarried, out of necessity, to feed her children.”

Could I, Moira Jennings asked, locate her grandfather’s grave? She sent me a detailed map of the great cemetery at Amara, showing that Private David Bell, service number S/7283, lay in LOT XVII. E. 6. The old Commonwealth War Graves Commission map she sent me should – in theory – have helped locate her grandfather’s grave. But I’d been to British war graves in Basra 15 years ago, and that cemetery had long ago been desecrated during Iraq’s civil war.

The War Graves Commission could not guard these cemeteries amid the dangers of kidnap or murder. Yet last month, on a trip to Baghdad and the Shia Muslim cities of southern Iraq, I suddenly realised I could at last honour a promise to Moira Jennings.

By extraordinary chance, I set off south from Kerbala on 22 April – the very day on which Private David Bell met his end at Amara. The road was straight and hot and the Tigris, beside which Bell was killed, was flooded. I feared the cemetery itself – or what was left of it – might be in the same state. But it didn’t take long to find, next to a gruesome new children’s “funfair”, a slew of gas stations and a massive builder’s dump.

The outer wall of the British cemetery was of 1920s brick and there was a small gatehouse – much dilapidated and secured with barbed wire – which I could find on the map that Moira Jennings sent me.

In theory, of course, this should have been a well-tended if deserted cemetery dedicated to those whose names – as every British cemetery tells us – “liveth for evermore”. But the gatehouse was empty, the drivers of the huge construction dump trucks indifferent. Yet one cheerfully told me that the man who lived in the little brick house – Hassan Houteif Mawsa – was at prayers in the local mosque and would soon be home. I padded round the graveyard perimeter in the hot sun.

My Iraqi fixer and driver were my protectors on this trip and they began to catch my enthusiasm. “Who was Mr David?” they asked. He was a shepherd, I said, who had five children, and he died right here in Amara. The faces of both men lightened. Private David Bell suddenly became real for them. A farming man – like many of the people of Amara – with a large family, like so many Iraqi families. For them, he belonged in Iraq. For me, Fife did not seem quite so far away.

And then, smiling broadly, there was Hassan himself, shaking hands, taking the padlock off the barbed-wire covered gate, inviting us to take fruit off the trees inside and bringing from his house a huge map. It was not a copy but an original British war office map – officially checked by “J Coleman” on 21 April 1922 – of the cemetery. And in those days, it was clear, each grave had a marker, a headstone, cut grass. No longer.

The dismal state of the Amara war cemetery is known, but perhaps too easily forgotten. Hassan’s schoolchild’s exercise book – which doubles as his personal visitor’s book to the cemetery – shows that British Commonwealth War Graves officials visited the site in 2015, and Trevor Lewis, a British embassy official in Baghdad, came on 18 May 2016. A colleague, Martin Fletcher, has also visited. So did many British soldiers who were part of the invasion and occupation force in and after 2003.

Hassan and I walked across the rough grass of the Amara cemetery, past the site of the great cross which now lies in concrete pieces – a vandalisation that can scarcely be repaired when Shia militias still exist across the south. The individual gravestones – for Private Bell did originally have his name here – were taken down in the 1930s when chemical erosion began to damage the stones.

Only two survive, neither of them Bell’s. But it was just possible to make out the original concrete lot marker to graves at XVII, and Hassan and I “walked out” the distance to “E 6”, until we were standing over whatever remained of poor Private Bell.

I had Moira Jennings’ letter in my file with me, so I picked some grass with purple tops from her grandfather’s resting place and put them in a plastic folder.

It was then that my driver shouted across to me. He was standing at a far wall of the cemetery, upon which the names of many of the dead were still visible. Hassan had told me how hard it was to preserve even this wall from vandals. Only a month ago, thieves had come into the cemetery at night and torn the brass fittings from the slabs, some of which – I noticed the Staffordshire Regiment, 1915 – had fallen into the grass.

My driver had found the slab for the Black Watch. And there it was: “Private D C Bell XVII E 6”. So even here – even today – the name of Moira’s grandad survives.

As for Hassan, he complained that he had not been paid since 1991, that his father was salaried as keeper before him but that he now worked for nothing, with no salary, to protect these graves.

This was sad, true, but not quite all the story.

Saddam’s Iraqi government told the War Graves Commission in 1992 that they should no longer employ their 22 staff in Iraq. The commission paid them generous indemnities and allowed all to continue to live in their cemetery buildings rent free. Which is why Hassan lives – for nothing – in his little house today. But he made one other, deeply moving remark.

“Some years ago,” he told me, “my neighbours and friends and people who knew I worked here told me it was forbidden to look after these foreign [Christian] graves. They said this over and over to me. I became very worried, so I went to see an ayatollah and explained the situation and sought his advice. And he said: ‘My son, you must continue to respect the dead – and look after them for their families who may one day come here’.”

And so the blessing of a Shia divine lies upon the 4,000 dead of Amara, along with Private Bell. I called Moira Jennings from Kerbala to tell her I had found her grandfather’s name on the wall and located the exact location of his remains. Who knows what these now are? But his bones – or what is left of them – are mixed in this earth, not far from his name. And this week, back from Iraq, I posted the small pile of grass from his grave to Moira’s address in Lincolnshire, where she lives in the ancient village of North Hykeham, far from Fife, and many thousands of miles from Amara. Or perhaps not that far.”

End of story.

We are thankful to Mr. Fisk and The Independent for this touching report. Mr. Fisk is without a doubt a most passionate journalist.

An oil painting on canvas by Denmark, Julie Anne and Meryll Dominguez which they presented to the Singh family when they visited our home recently. We are most grateful for this priceless gift. It hangs on the wall in your bedroom.

A Life is priceless. Every Life should be treasured and respected. These are the lessons you taught me, David. I go on walking in your footsteps. Always a student of yours.

Daddy outside St. Joseph’s Institution International School today to lay flowers at the spot you always waited for me to fetch you home.

We love you, David.

- Daddy

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secondsofhappiness · 7 years

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Megan, amazing message that rant just about covered it, thanks! I love this 👒 & that's all she really deserves! I despise her! But this morning is the first time in a long time (since before the incident!) I feel a bit better about things.. robron are very much in love that is crystal clear to me,Rob seems guilty & appalled at what he's done & all this just seems like an obstacle they will overcome in time.. I think if I can see the direction of something it makes me feel a bit better for now🙏

Hannah!

I do agree and it is becoming very easy to separate The Storyline That Shall Not Be Named from the rest. We shall have to see what next week brings.

Ryan and Danny are what saves this mess. Easily. Hands down. If this “storyline” (haha) was given to another couple (which it has to be honest… so.many.times) then it would be much less impactful and would make the couple insignificant. As actors, they have the skills to drag any hideous storyline to a level that is palatable and that’s bloody skill! So much so that you can easily forget the other rubbish and focus on their parts that, in large part, don’t even relate to the pregnancy shiz (which is why it seems like insanity to me to even include it - it’s not necessary at all). I was never that bothered about Rob making a pass at 👒 or even kissing her while drunk and a mess and screwed up (if the scene preceding it in the prison made sense which sadly it didn’t at all) so that stuff I could always work past because it didn’t feel all that out of character to me nor did the way he acted and spoke on the night because that’s Rob, 90% is nonsense when he’s broken or angry. We know this. So pregnancy is the only element I just can’t deal with… I don’t even like kids and as soon as kids get added to a couple, I tend to get bored. I mean, that’s personal to me though as I know some people love baby stories (but obv not in these circumstances). It’s just so lazy and boring and predictable… how many gay male relationships go this route?! So. Many and I have only followed a couple. Straight couples rarely get lumbered with a baby due to a night of cheating in the grand scheme of things. But I’m still weirdly convinced she isn’t pregnant hahaha. Anyway, enough of that!

I really enjoyed the Rob/Aaron scenes yesterday after I eventually watched it all last night when I got home. I thought the acting was flawless from both of them. Aaron has grown so wonderfully from being closed off and keeping things inside to being open and honest with Rob and explaining his feelings. That’s enormous and very important because often with mental health, the person just can’t and they only open up to strangers. Aaron’s now not afraid to say what he’s feeling even if he thinks Rob might not want to hear it and that’s massive. Also, it seems they might be getting Aaron help which is what we all wanted and what he deserves. It’s a shame they have even included a further impending misery for him because it’s not necessary and it’s cruel. Still, seeing him seeking actual comfort both emotional and physical is special - so much touching… that’s mad to me as Aaron isn’t normally so affectionate but he actively weeks it from Rob now and it’s pretty exclusively from Rob which shows how strongly he loves him and how important Rob is in his life. That’s huge for Aaron as a character as even hugs instigated from another person used to be an issue!!)

Rob is clearly teetering at times between fear, desperation, sadness, regret and also the odd moment of forgetting (in bed, seeing his phone and smiling and then remembering…) and Ryan is doing a stellar job. The moment when he doesn’t want Aaron to into their bedroom. That was really significant to me. Aaron would see anything and there’d be nothing amiss with Aaron going in there but ROBERT can’t have him in there and that’s a pretty enormous sign that this is a different circumstance for Rob. Before, he literally slept with Chrissie after Aaron, he slept with Aaron in Chrissie’s bed etc, there was no guilt there at all really. Maybe low level but nothing enough to stop him doing it again or make him riddled with guilt to the point where he can’t go back in the same room etc. The SL is nonsense and the full on cheating should never have happened on the circumstances it did but now it has, it is very clear that this is a VERY different situation from 2015. Rob is lying - but yeah, Aaron is still assaulting people. They’re both turning to vices they have to protect themselves or deal with their emotions or at a more basic level, because they just don’t know anything else. Their vices are their most interesting facets because it has always been a story about two very very broken people who can’t express or receive love easily but who found something they want and some comfort in someone else and are clinging onto that and fumbling through it. That was ALWAYS what made them special. It’s the same reason that other couples like Captain Swan (my other sweethearts) etc are so popular and beloved because it’s broken people finding peace and love and comfort and family. It’s a shame the show took their eyes off the ball and turned that journey temporarily into something crass and cheap for the sake of DRAMA rather than actual respect to the characters we know and love. But hey ho!

So I can definitely watch their scenes happily and really enjoy them because the acting is flawless, the connection is still 100% there and because of those two things… our Rob, the one we know and have seen develop is back again and I think just having Aaron back in the village is important for me. Not having him around feels so weird. Before, I didn’t place so much weight on Aaron in the village to the extent that when he left back in the day, I was so sad but I didn’t really feel his absence because the show had so many strong characters and storylines running and I’d become really disillusioned with the whole Jackson storyline… but now, he’s kind of integral for me. Chas is the same for me. She’s key to my love for the show. Her absence is really obvious to me and I already miss her a lot! I want her back asap! That’s so different to how I used to feel. In the past it was always Laurel, Paddy and Carl. Hahaha. They were my three characters who I just couldn’t cope with losing and then my ultimate nightmare, Carl, left and I was ANGRY with the show because of what happened before he left but I had Laurel and Marlon (happy sigh) etc and all the Declan and Charity madness which I bloody loved (where is Declan, come back!!!!!!!!!) but things have changed recently and I’d be genuinely crushed if Aaron went because his absence is so noticeable for me and lessens my heart’s hold on the show… I’m sure everyone has those characters in serial drama but nowadays mine are Aaron and Chas and losing Chas and still not having Aaron back made it weird to find my heart in the show - does this make sense?! Just an odd thing I realised :)

Rob, Liv and Charity are close seconds. Having Charity back is the best.

Wowza, I rambled on the train again!! This is good. I’m getting back to my old ways ;) but in short hahaha I know what you mean about feeling ok about things. I will bored as all hell if there’s a baby but I’m pretty happy to declare the Storyline That Shall Not Be Named a fever dream and erase it from my conscience when it’s done if there is no baby and 👒 scuttles off to wherever she came from or gets trapped in the HF Fire of Dreams 🔥. If there’s a baby then Christ alive, it will be unbearable being expected to feel anything other than mild annoyance for 👒 and to be required to have her, a MF White, forever entangled in Rob’s story. Not to mention it’d involve Lawrence sticking in his beak and Chrissie gloating and scheming and the whole sorry lot of them being gross and utterly boring. I can write it now - the 100000000th “get out of my house” scene from Lawrence. Bring back bloody Declan and he can burn the place down again because Dog is taking too damn long!

Ok so I’m shutting up now. I’ve clearly been storing this all up ;) I love hearing your thoughts, missus. I’m so pleased to be able to chat to you and to enjoy things again. Slowly but surely 😘 have the loveliest Friday!

#messages from hannah #ask

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emma-what-son · 7 years

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Emma Watson: the feminist and the fairytale

From TheGuardian Feb 2017: This person really thinks her feminism is genuine, but at least they’re pointing out that she isn’t A-list.

She’s about to star as the heroine of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, but post-Potter she has received more plaudits for her activism than her acting.

It may seem strange that one of the most anticipated films of 2017 should be a live-action remake of a Disney cartoon about Stockholm syndrome, but Beauty and the Beast has already built up the kind of fan base that is normally reserved for rebooted sci-fi franchises and adaptations of erotic bestsellers. When the first trailer went online in November, it was viewed a record 127m times in 24 hours, beating the previous leaders in that particular field, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Fifty Shades Darker. Stranger still, 27m of those views were on the Facebook page of the film’s star, Emma Watson.

That figure might suggest that the 26-year-old who played Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series is now a bona fide superstar. But Watson’s celebrity status is slightly more complicated. As a Hollywood player, she isn’t going to give Jennifer Lawrence or Scarlett Johansson sleepless nights, but as an actor-activist she has the kind of influence that would have been unimaginable a generation ago.

For proof that Watson isn’t yet an A-lister, you just have to glance at her filmography since she hung up her Gryffindor robes. Broadly speaking, she has taken supporting roles in ensemble projects, such as Simon Curtis’s My Week with Marilyn and Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, and above-the-title roles in films that vanished without trace. Alejandro Amenábar’s repressed-memory chiller Regression didn’t recoup its $20m budget, and Colonia (AKA The Colony) pulled in a grand total of £47 in its opening weekend in the UK. Meanwhile, she turned down the title role in Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella, and accepted then dropped out of La La Land, thus handing Emma Stone the part that may well win her a best actress Oscar. In the years between Harry Potter and Beauty and the Beast, in other words, Watson was better known for films she wasn’t in than for films she was.

In contrast, Kristen Stewart followed her stint in the Twilight series by embracing arthouse cinema and being embraced right back: she was the first American female actor to win a César award for her performance in Clouds of Sils Maria. And Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, has grabbed every possible acting opportunity, from big-budget capers (Now You See Me 2) to indie curios (Swiss Army Man), from television (A Young Doctor’s Casebook) to theatre (Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead). Compared to them, Watson is barely trying.

But there is more on her mind than acting. Having stepped away from the business to study for an English degree at Brown University in Rhode Island, she now spends as much time on feminism as she does on films. In 2014, she became a UN Women goodwill ambassador; in 2015, she was named on the Time 100 list of world’s most influential people, and last year she continued to make headlines by, for example, leaving feminist books around the London Underground system.

None of that may appear very remarkable: Watson isn’t the first film star to double as a political activist. But few stars can have been as reassuring or inclusive in their consciousness-raising. When Angelina Jolie and Leonardo DiCaprio signed up to humanitarian and environmental causes, for instance, they were already untouchably glamorous demigods whose lives seemed a million miles away from their fans’, and whose jet-setting activism seemed almost as distant. Watson is different. She may have flown to Bangladesh, Uruguay and Zambia on behalf of the UN, but she doesn’t come across as if she is lecturing her fans from on high – more as if she is learning alongside them.

The first reason for this is that Watson’s fans feel, with some justification, that they know her. Not only have they watched her growing up onscreen in eight blockbusters, but they have heard her admit that the character she played in those blockbusters was just like her. In an interview with feminist author bell hooks in Paper magazine, she said that when she started reading JK Rowling’s novels, at the age of eight, “the character of Hermione gave me permission to be who I was,” ie, “the girl in school whose hand shot up to answer the questions”. But when she was cast as Hermione she used her earliest interviews to deny she was that girl: “At first I was really trying to say, ‘I’m not like Hermione. I’m into fashion and I’m much cooler than she is,’ and then I came to a place of acceptance. Actually, we do have a lot in common. There are obviously differences, but there are a lot of ways that I’m very similar. And I stopped fighting that!”

If Watson-watchers believe she is just as earnest, studious and intelligent as Hermione, then, they have her permission. Whereas so many former child stars have shattered their youthful images, either by going off the rails in their personal lives (eg, Drew Barrymore) or choosing to play edgy, sexualised roles on film (eg, Dakota Fanning), Watson has been brave enough to carry on being the school swot. The youngsters who identified with her when they saw her in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 2001 can feel that she has yet to let them down, nearly 16 years later.

Even her activism is bound up with that swottiness. Rather than manning the barricades, Watson has focused on reading, discussion, and chronicling her studies on social media, thus making them accessible in a way that would once have been impossible. Last year, she set up a Goodreads online book club, Our Shared Shelf, which recommends a text to its 168,000 members every two months. Its current book is Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. “There is so much amazing stuff out there,” Watson enthuses on the club’s homepage. “Funny, inspiring, sad, thought-provoking, empowering! I’ve been discovering so much that, at times, I’ve felt like my head was about to explode.”

Again, these are hardly the pronouncements of a Tinseltown divinity, but the sincere effusions of someone who is really getting into her homework project, and who wants her friends to get into it, too. It is no wonder Watson’s fans have taken to feminism with her. And it’s no wonder those fans are so thrilled about her starring role as Belle in Beauty and the Beast.

Watson rejected the part of Cinderella, she has said, because the passive character didn’t “resonate” with her. But Belle is a more Hermione-ish heroine. In the original 1991 cartoon, she wasn’t content to do the housework with the help of some chirruping bluebirds: she strolled through town with her nose in a book. And Watson told Total Film magazine that she had pushed the character even further from the traditional Disney doormat, so as to ensure that she is “the kind of woman I would want to embody as a role model”. She isn’t just Belle, but bell hooks. Never before has there been such continuity between an actress’s online persona and her two most iconic roles.

Of course, Watson is still playing a fairytale heroine in a film with “Beauty” in the title, so she isn’t exactly dismantling the patriarchy. “She’s a very useful figure for feminism, because she attracts people who might not be drawn to it in another form,” says Professor Diane Negra, the author of What a Girl Wants: Fantasising the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism. “But she is a particularly palatable version of a feminist celebrity. She is a very glamorous and polished figure with all the markers of privilege. She is clearly not an activist of the old school.”

One way to understand Watson’s very 21st-century celebrity activism is to see her as a multi-hyphenate entrepreneur in the vein of Beyoncé and Gwyneth Paltrow. It’s just that instead of using her brand to promote her own range of perfumes and cookbooks, she is using it to promote gender equality. And if Disney gets a ton of free advertising along the way, so be it. For every hundred Watson fans who go to see her in Beauty and the Beast, there will be one who reads The Vagina Monologues on the bus home.

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ecoorganic · 4 years

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'Ted Lasso' and the Journey From Viral Promo to TV Series

Jason Sudeikis reprises his role as a befuddled coach in England, with his viral NBC promos evolving into a full-on TV show. He explains the story of how it happened.

There’s a scene in Ted Lasso, where the title character–Jason Sudeikis’s American football coach who abruptly turns into a Premier League manager–sprints to the assistant referee in the middle of a crucial match after raising his flag for an offside call.

“Come on, now! What do you mean? How’s that offside?” complains Lasso, with his characteristic Kansan drawl as the linesman looks at him with confusion.

“What?” asks the official.

Lasso gets closer. “No, I’m serious. How’s that offside...I don’t understand it yet.”

This lack of complete understanding and across-the-pond confusion is one way to describe the essence of Apple TV+’s latest sitcom, which originated from a 2013 NBC Sports promo. That's where Sudeikis introduced his character as part of the network’s acquisition of the Premier League broadcast rights.

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The idea was simple. Lasso, an intense, wide-eyed college football coach from Kansas City arrives in London and enters the alien world of the Premier League. In the promos, he takes over Tottenham (the following season,

he returns as head coach of youth girls' team St. Catherine Fighting Owls), questioning why players don’t wear more pads and teaching the art of flopping. He has no knowledge of the game or its cultural and historical significance. It was a satiric outlook at two different worlds seen through the eyes of a naïve American, and for NBC, it was a way to both attract a loyal, knowledgeable soccer fan as well as appeal to a new audience.

In the end, it worked, as both promos (2013 and 2014) went viral and gained a tremendous amount of attention. Combined, the videos have generated more than 20 million views on YouTube and helped the network build a strong foundation for its Premier League audience.

It’s been six years since those promos aired, and soccer in the U.S.–without Ted Lasso–has grown tremendously in popularity. So how was the character revived?

“I guess it’s a dozen little things that go right that you’re willing and ready to receive,” Sudeikis told Sports Illustrated. “After doing the second video (in 2014), it really unlocked elements of the character that we found very, very fun to write and portray and view the world through. So, one day in 2015, my partner Olivia (the actress and filmmaker Olivia Wilde) came up to me one day and said, ‘You know, you should do Ted Lasso as a show,’ and I said, ‘I don’t know,’ but then after marinating on it, I thought maybe this could happen.”

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In spring of the same year, Sudeikis got together with his creative partners and writers, Joe Kelly and Brendan Hunt–the three of them started together with Chicago’s well-known improv group The Second City and Amsterdam’s Boom Chicago; Hunt also plays Lasso’s assistant coach and confidante Coach Beard–and powered through for a week to see if they could create a show out of it.

“When you have a germ of an idea, you don’t know if it’s something you say out loud or if it’s a tweet or a letter or a screenplay, who knows," Sudeikis said. "So, we sat down, and we were able to bang out a pilot pretty quick in that week. As well as outlining six to 10 episodes of the first season. And that let us know, ‘O.K., there’s something here.’”

Despite the excitement for the idea, that’s all it was at that moment–an idea without a home. So, life continued, and the three friends left Ted Lasso alone for a few years and diverted their focus to their respective careers.

“But that allowed us to get a little space from it, and low and behold, the showbiz gods looked and smiled down on us and brought Bill to our doorstep,” Sudeikis said.

"Bill" is Bill Lawrence, the experienced television writer, producer and creative force behind award-winning shows such as Scrubs, Cougar Town and Spin City. Lawrence entered the frame in 2017 when he and Sudeikis played pickup basketball a couple of nights a week and one night, the idea of Ted Lasso came up. After a few more chats, he read the script and the concept and was immediately interested.

“I wanted to work with Jason Sudeikis, he just cracks me up. I thought he was awesome on SNL, whenever he shows up in a movie, I’m immediately into it and he seems like that dude you want to hang with,” Lawrence said. “I’d also seen those sketches, the promotional videos for the Premier League back when he did them and I thought they were so funny, and he said, 'What if we made that character three-dimensional and really rounded him out?' Ted Lasso can still be goofy and funny, but we could also have our version.”

And this was critical for Sudeikis. In the commercials, Lasso’s unawareness is funny and often endearing, but for a show, there had be more to him for the audience to not just laugh, but also root for him.

“I think Scrubs is a fantastic show. You can put the 10 best episodes of it up against any show,” Sudeikis said. “Bill writes male characters and relationships so beautifully, his use of music and dealing with heavy duty issues of life and death. And now, two years later, here we are talking about it. It’s actually really gonna happen and I can’t kind of believe it.”

Not only is the show happening (it premieres this Friday), but it also succeeds in its mission. Ted Lasso is warm, it’s funny and–like the main character–it has heart. Unlike the commercials, where Ted’s biggest trait is his buffoonery, the show celebrates his relentless thirst for hope. He is a man with passion, dignity and someone you for whom you cheer. Lasso is the eternal optimist, whose naivety is both a strength and a weakness, and just like J.D from Scrubs, Lasso is vulnerable (in the show, he actually leaves the U.S. to escape from a troubled marriage) and aches for comfort. That’s what he offers his new team in return–an arrogant, underachieving Premier League side controlled by a scorned owner. It’s not Tottenham this time around, but the fictional AFC Richmond.

Lawrence sees Lasso as the perfect example of the inspiring teacher. A sports version of Robin Williams's John Keating from Dead Poets Society, where his personality is a weapon against cynical reporters and resentful fans who naturally express their disgust at the thought of an American with no knowledge of the game taking over their beloved club.

“We all grew up with a favorite teacher or a favorite coach. They put us on a path. These people never force you into doing anything. It’s just good folks,” Lawrence said. “Me and Jason overlap cause we also like doing shows with heart and because it’s such a dumpster-fire time in the world, Jason really wanted to do a show that was hopeful and optimistic, and most sports movies have that. That’s what's at their core. It’s the underdog. We were trying to capture that optimism and hopefulness that comes with those iconic figures from your life, whether it’s a coach, a teacher or a parent.”

If there's a coach in the real Premier League that emits optimism and hopefulness, it's Liverpool's Jurgen Klopp, and Sudeikis admits that Lasso's character in the show is partly inspired by him.

“Man. When I heard about him taking his squad to go do karaoke, I was like, ‘hellooooo, story idea…’” said Sudeikis, who also admires Pep Guardiola. “I really love those coaches. I really like the way they handle themselves as leaders of an organization. They are guys who I would follow into a fist fight.”

Sudeikis loves the game but fully admits he still needs to do more before calling himself a hardcore, scholarly fan.

"I love the sport. My joke has been that I have a deep appreciation for it but a shallow understanding. But that’s why I keep company with Brendan and Joe, who know their stuff,” Sudeikis said. “But it’s still all new to me. Every time I go to see a match, I buy a kit for me at the gift shop and a kit for my little boy. I’m ready to be a fair-weather fan for whoever needs it [laughs]. I know people hate for me that, but that’s the truth.”

The showrunners put together a cast with colorful characters who add depth to the multiple plots. There’s the tough-as-nails veteran midfielder Roy Kent (surely inspired by Roy Keane and played by Brett Goldstein), the narcissistic Man City loanee Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster), the charismatic duo of Dani Rojas (Mexican star played by Cristo Fernandez) and Nigerian forward Sam Obisanya (Toheeb Jimoh). Nick Mohammed (who can be seen in Sky TV/Peacock’s Intelligence) also shines as the quiet kitman. It’s also refreshing to hear NBC’s Arlo White serving as the show’s commentator throughout AFC Richmond’s season.

But if there’s someone aside from Sudeikis's Lasso who steals the show, it’s Keeley Jones, the confident and no-nonsense TV celebrity/model/PR guru played by Juno Temple. She was the only actor who didn’t audition, as Sudeikis, who knew her work, wanted her in the show from the get-go.

“I met Juno with Olivia when they were on Vinyl (Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese’s 2016 HBO show), so I’ve done karaoke with her. I’ve been in a room with her. I knew her,” Sudeikis said. “She’s so fun and dynamic and just pro-female. She’s just a kick-ass that lives with an excitement that’s fun to be around, and that’s a little bit of what the character had.”

In the end, Ted Lasso is exactly what an audience needs right now. It’s a story that makes you laugh and reminds you to smile at adversity. It’s a lesson that’s less about football management and more about unity, and the script works because it takes a hold of our differences and embraces them as one. And it echoes Lasso’s favorite Walt Whitman quote, “Be curious, not judgmental.”

Lasso is heroic, not because he commands respect but because he earns it. He is kind, because he doesn’t know any other way. But like us, he is also vulnerable, and that’s why we can relate to his journey.

“He’s more white rabbit than white knight, but he’s actually becoming the change he wants to see in the world, without any agenda,” Sudeikis said. “And these days, that’s unusual, both in real life and on television.”

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desireesroadtrip · 6 years

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Episode III: Return of the Jetta

It is now July 2018. I have gone on two major road trips in my life thus far. I am about to embark on the third. But before I tell you about that, let’s reflect on those first two I’ve taken…

Hello, all.

My name is Desiree Echevarria and I have wanderlust.

I’m 27 years old and have lived in Southern California my whole life. I’d like to get out immediately please, if only for a little while. And here’s why.

Every day, I go to a job that, admittedly, I like a whole lot. I have family and friends that I like a whole lot. I have a life that I sure do like a whole lot.

And yet…

I gotta get the fuck out of here.

At the end of every day, in order to get home, I drive east on one the many freeways in Southern California that are in a perpetual state of apocalyptic clusterfuckery. I sit in traffic. I dodge assholes who are seemingly using their BMWs to try to commit vehicular manslaughter on everyone else on the freeway. Sometimes, I’ll admit it, I’ll add to my own anxiety by being the asshole who’s trying get ahead in traffic using my clearly superior weaving skills. OUT OF THE WAY, JERKS, I HAVE TO GET TO MY HOUSE BEFORE YOU GET TO YOURS. I NEED THAT EXTRA 2 MINUTES TO SIT AROUND AND BE TOO LAZY TO SHOWER.

I look out the car window and see the same scenery every day. If it’s not the crumbling concrete of the rough, grey L.A. freeways, it’s the boring, well-manicured, strategically landscaped, but grotesquely artificial, ambiance of Orange County. And every day, while sitting there in traffic, I think to myself: “What if I just kept driving? What if I didn’t stop at my exit and I just kept going east? Who would stop me? No one, that’s who.”

That’s what I wrote five years ago in my mission statement (you can re-visit that lengthy manifesto here) prior to embarking on a three-week road trip across the country and back. It was a trip that, when I returned, a friend of mine referred to as a “walkabout.” I liked that. So that’s what I call it now.

I drove my Volkswagen GTI (R.I.P.) from Los Angeles through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada.

Pictured: Black Magic the GTI, the most beloved of all my Volkswagens.

I didn’t have any deadlines or any real destinations. I went just to see what I could see. I stopped and pulled off the road to take photos whenever I felt like it. I talked to strangers. I blogged a lot. And it was fucking awesome.

(I won’t rehash the happenings of that first trip because literally every post on this Tumblr prior to this one chronicles them in detail. I created this Tumblr specifically for that trip and am reviving it for this next one. Scroll back to read about my exploits if you’d like.)

That first trip was a major turning point in my life. It got me out of my lifelong comfort zone and made me a little more fearless in general – and that alone has had far-reaching effects. That trip shook all my shit up, in a good way.

Today, I’m 32 years old and a lot has changed since then.

For starters, I don’t like the word “wanderlust" anymore. Makes me cringe. Please forget I ever used it.

But also, I don’t live in Southern California anymore. I live in Austin, Texas – a place I encountered on that very first megatrip.

This might seem surprising because in my post-roadtrip recap back in 2013, you may recall I returned from that trip with grand plans to “kick down Hollywood’s door and take the motherfucker over.”

Narrator voice: She did not take the motherfucker over.

So how did I end up in Austin? (I get this question a lot. So, finally, here’s your answer. *Clears throat.*)

Throughout my twenties, I worked in Hollywood. When you work in Hollywood, your friends and family love to hear stories about the most glamorous parts of your job. Everyone loves hearing a story with a famous person in it, even if the story is simply, “I got an email from Jennifer Lawrence today. She seems nice.” See, there’s a famous person in that riveting story about a work email. That makes it a good story. It’s very cool to come home from work and tell people that you spent the day with Clint Eastwood or that Jay Leno showed you around his fancy car garage or that Bradley Cooper asked you for a bottle of water and you handed it to him and you will both cherish that moment forever.

It’s very cool to tell people those parts of your job. But those aren’t even the everyday moments. Those are the sometimes moments. They’re awfully cool, but what happens when the day-to-day of your job is in no way fulfilling and, in fact, sucks so much ass? That’s much less cool.

It’s a tough trade-off. Because you like being able to tell your family and friends your Hollywood anecdotes. It makes you seem interesting. You like being able to watch a movie and see your name in the credits. It makes you feel important.

And it’s a hell of a thing to have to admit to yourself that it’s not actually what you want at all.

But that’s exactly what I did at the end of 2015.

Hi, I’m Desiree Echevarria. I’m sure you remember me from The Hunger Games. I played Katniss.

Here’s where I was: American Sniper was finally finished. I worked through TWO releases of those DVDs, one per year. So I had SOMEHOW been working on American Sniper for a damn year and a half (looooong after the film had left the theaters and lost all the Oscars). So I was bored and ready for something new.

My boss came to work one day and very excitedly told me that the next movie we would be working on was Clint Eastwood’s new film, Sully, starring Tom Hanks. It was our job to produce the bonus features for it, as per usual. The film would likely be a hit, like anything else Clint Eastwood or Tom Hanks does.

And yet I felt nothing. I did not feel excited. I did not feel awe. I did not feel that Hollywood magic that I know I felt at some point in my life before.

A Clint Eastwood/Tom Hanks joint walks through the door and I feel nothing.

I was burnt. out.

Sorry, Clint.

It was time for a change, and not just on a three-week walkabout to recharge my mental batteries this time. For one thing, I was broke af (because the thing everyone loves to downplay about working in Hollywood is that the pay is shit and if you don’t like it well, fuck you, there’s a line of about a thousand suckers right behind you just BEGGING for a shot at your gig). But also, I didn’t want to have to come back to this place — not just this production company, but this Hollywood. It was time for a REAL-ASS CHANGE.

Austin, Texas was about as much of a 180-degree shift from my status quo as was possible. So that’s where I set my sights.

I moved out of my expensive-but-still-somehow-in-a-bad-part-of-town Los Angeles apartment and into my parents’ house 50 miles away in Orange County for a few months to save what little money I could (and braving the 4-hour round trip commuting to the production office in Glendale daily as a trade-off).

I remember the day I put in my two weeks’ notice at that production company. My boss, a producer who had done pretty well for himself, had gone on vacation (he went to his vacation house at least once a month, otherwise he would “go stir crazy!” he often said). I remember I was alone at the office on a Friday. And I mean ALONE alone. I had no co-workers. It was just me and my boss. Though, most days it was just me. All alone. In a small room. My boss liked to work from home mostly, and he had the freedom to do so.

On this particular Friday, I asked if I could work from home. Doing so would save me four painful hours of driving in L.A. traffic. We weren’t a busy office. People didn’t stop by. People didn’t call. We seldom got packages and if they were important (a delivery of assets from a studio or something) I sure as shit knew if they were coming. But my only project on that day was writing research reports for Sully. So, yes, I could have done my job from home. My boss could have done me a HUGE solid by just saying yes to my simple request.

Still, my boss said no. He didn’t feel “comfortable” with me working from home even though it was 2016 and the internet had been invented decades earlier. Besides, what if an office emergency came up?!

Narrator voice: An office emergency had never come up.

I said, “Okay.” And I spent that day in the office. By myself. Pouting. Lamenting my lack of freedom and control over my own life. All while my boss was sitting in a hammock, strumming one of his many vintage guitars at his vacation cabin in the mountains. This seems like a relevant time to add that this job did not come with health insurance.

I put in my two weeks’ notice that day.

I was 30 years old. And this shit was no longer worth it.

Two weeks later, I packed up my Volkswagen Rabbit (R.I.P.) with everything I owned. I didn’t own much. A friend would later call the fact that I was able to fit my entire life into a car “romantic.” I call it “poor.” I then embarked on the second major road trip of my life: the move from my home in California to my fresh start in Austin, Texas.

I didn’t know what the fuck was going to happen, but at least I was free.

Pictured: Tibor the Volkswagen Rabbit, named after the German man who sold him to me (and who replaced the Rabbit decal with a Golf decal for some reason).

Road Trip 2: The Great Escape

I drove from California to Texas in two days in a car that I wasn’t sure would even survive the trip.

The trip HAD to be two days because I didn’t want to blow what little money I had staying in hotels over the course of several nights. I didn’t have a job waiting for me in Austin – in fact, all that was waiting for me there was just one friend from California and a cheap two-month sublet to share with a stranger from Craigslist.

On Day One, I drove from Orange County, CA to Flagstaff, AZ because my friend Camille lived in Flagstaff and I stayed at her house. However, Flagstaff was nowhere CLOSE to being the halfway point between California and Austin. So my first day’s drive was just 7 hours. Meaning my second day… well, my second day was 15 hours and 1,026 miles of pure hell.

For one thing, the aux input in my car was broken and the only CDs I had with me were five Taylor Swift CDs. I know on the surface, that doesn’t seem THAT bad (after all, it’s better than silence, right?), but I listened to those five Taylor Swift CDs over and over and over again throughout the course of 22 driving hours, pushing myself to the brink of madness and back again several times over.

I tried listening to the radio, but when you’re driving through endless zero-population towns in West Texas, you can’t put a lot of faith in radio stations that play music even EXISTING. (Though, there are plenty of radio stations with loud preachers yelling about how most things are The Devil™.) So even though I was on a tight schedule, I made the time to pull over at a Wal-Mart and buy a CD – ANY CD – that wasn’t Taylor Swift. I purchased a Luke Bryan CD.

By the end of this ordeal, I would come to hate Luke Bryan as well.

(Note: I have since forgiven both Taylor Swift and Luke Bryan for what they did to me that day.)

But deeper than that, my Road Trip 2 lacked all of what made that first road trip great. I didn’t enjoy it the way I had before. This time, I didn’t take the trip slow and stop along the way to smell the roses and take pictures of interesting rocks I saw. This time, the trip wasn’t a walkabout. It was a mission, and a scary one at that.

What if I failed? What if I got to Texas and hated it, or couldn’t find a job, or ran out of money, or became a Republican? There was a lot for me to worry about on that drive.

After 15 hours, I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I thought the drive would never end – especially in the late hours driving down endless empty two-lane roads in the pitch-black darkness of West Texas, with what I still maintain to this day were UFOs in the distance. I showed up at my Craigslist sublet at midnight, immediately rolled my sleeping bag out on the floor, cried for the 90 seconds I remained awake, and then passed out.

Pictured: my first Austin apartment. I slept on a mattress on the floor for longer than I care to admit.

The first thing that made me feel better after that sad-ass moving night was waking up the next day and being able to see some familiar faces. My friend Krista, who had moved to Austin not long before I did, swung by my empty apartment, picked me up and gave me a tour of the city. That helped make the transition remarkably easier.

Pictured: my first meal on my first day in Austin at the now-defunct restaurant Bacon (R.I.P.) courtesy of tour guide, @kristadoyle.

Also, as luck would have it, my friends from back home, Kyle and Iris, happened to be on vacation in Austin during that very weekend and we were able to meet up and do some touristy shit together. And again, that familiarity in a strange new place calmed my nerves immensely. I value my friendships above pretty much everything in the entire world and things like this are why. I like to think I’m pretty resilient on my own, but I’m far more resilient with help from my pals. I highly recommend friendship A+++ 11/10, 4 stars.

Pictured: Kyle, me, and Iris during my first weekend in Austin in the quintessential tourist destination -- Dirty 6th.

But once that introductory weekend was over, I had a lot of hustling to do. I didn’t have a job AND I only had enough saved to live comfortably for two months — which meant I had two months to make it work in Austin or I would have to crawl back to my parents’ house in California with my tail between my legs. The clock was ticking.

That Monday was the first day of SXSW, Austin’s major annual music, film, and tech festival. I had decided to move to Austin in time for SXSW because people on Reddit told me that if I wanted to network in Austin and find a job, I needed to be at SXSW. But badges to get into SXSW run upwards of thousands of dollars (which I did NOT have). So I got in the only way I could – by working for free. I volunteered for a week at SXSW and got a badge in return.

And for once, Reddit was right. I got two job offers that first week.

I knew then that everything was gonna be okay.

Still, the offers I was able to get weren’t ideal. I took a job doing customer support at a website in Austin while patiently biding my time for the job I REALLY wanted to open up: a content writer position at the startup where my friend Krista worked (also as a writer). She raved about how awesome it was and how, someday soon, they would probably hire more writers. So I waited all spring and summer for that probably. For six months, I looked something like this:

Then, finally, a writer position opened up and I pounced on it. I got the job and can honestly say, it’s one of the best things to ever happen to me.

This sounds pretty anticlimactic, I’m sure. There was this thing I wanted and I was patient and then I got it. But to me, it’s been pretty life-changing.

Working as a writer at a great company (Aceable – we’re hiring) is what I wanted all those years in Hollywood. And I just never quite found it. Sometimes I worked on projects that didn’t inspire me, sometimes I was doing work I was capable of, but not passionate about (hello, post-production), and more often than not, I worked for companies that didn’t challenge me or offer an actual career path. It wasn’t their fault necessarily, but a symptom of the small-production-company-grind that plagues much of Hollywood.

But by sticking around that kind of environment, I would always be doomed to this cycle of burning out and getting out, burning out and getting out, repeat times infinity. I’d always be looking for a temporary escape and it would never be enough – because I would never truly feel like I have control over my life.

Getting my job at Aceable was the validation I needed to finally stop feeling as though I was moving backwards rather than forwards.

I never would have imagined as a kid who was OBSESSED with making a name for herself in Hollywood that I would find everything I was looking for in a career in the middle of Texas.

Oh yeah, and now I get to work from home WHENEVER I WANT.

There’s a saying that goes: Don’t cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.

I won’t say that my time in Hollywood was a “mistake” because, in reality, I HAD to do it – all of it. If I hadn’t, I never would have learned that it wasn’t what I wanted. Some alternate universe Desiree is out there, writing a blog where she laments never having taken the chance to pursue her film and TV dreams and then leaves behind her job as an astronaut to make it happen (what an idiot).

Besides, I had my fun. I did work on cool stuff. Working on the first film I co-produced, The Hopeful, gave me some of my all-time favorite memories and left me with some awesome friends that I still have today. I got the chance to work on my favorite show of all time, The Simpsons, and for that I’ll always be grateful. But all those pursuits had significant drawbacks and, ultimately, weren’t sustainable, like a lot of film/TV career paths (but that’s a whole OTHER conversation for another day). It turns out my heart just wasn’t in it.

I also want to say, as I’ve said many times before (and y’all are probably sick of it but this is my blog, get your own) Austin is a really fucking great place. I like it here. I feel a sense of community and pride in my city for the first time in my life. My list of restaurants to try in Austin is NEVER-ENDING. It’s gotten to the point where I feel guilty going to the same restaurant twice now because I’m always thinking, “Shit, I could be trying a new place instead.” Put simply: it rules.

So I’m in a uncharted territory going into the third major road trip of my life…

Road Trip 3: The Everything’s Actually Pretty Okay

For the first time, I’m not using a road trip as a motif for some kind of escape. Progress!

I’m packing up my Volkswagen Jetta for a trip across the southwest that will be part walkabout, but also part of it will include some much needed quality time meeting up with some good friends from California. It’s a regular, good ol’ fashioned vacation. And I’m super pumped.

As always, I’ll take the time to be alone with my thoughts because while I’m at a place in my life where I feel pretty settled in a lot of ways, let’s never lose sight of the fact that I am an always-buzzing ball of anxiety and need these little jaunts as a way to reset my brain. It’s for this same reason that I like to go camping a lot (though camping in Texas seems abysmal DON’T @ ME.)

I’ve always appreciated road trips for the head-clearing they allow me to do.

I’ll take little weekend trips here and there for a breather.

There was the time when, on a whim, I drove from L.A. to the Grand Canyon because I had spent months pouring my blood, sweat, and tears into writing an awards show that turned out ABSOLUTELY AWFUL (read aaaallllllll about it here).

There was the time I drove from Austin to Scott, Louisiana (the boudin capital of the world!) to clear my head after a summer on the dating apps broke my brain – damn you, Bumble!

And then there was the time I spent an entire day driving aimlessly through the rural areas outside of Austin the weekend after the 2016 election (ugh) to calm my nerves with the sight of pastoral landscapes and the taste of out-of-town BBQ before the impending unraveling of American democracy began.

Road trips clear your head, man. They’re underrated. Whenever I tell people I’m going on a road trip, they tend to say things like “Oh no, all that driving! Hope you have plenty of audiobooks all lined up!”

And I’m like… no.

I don’t want to distract myself. The whole point is the solitude. I like the solitude.

I like that there is NOTHING to see sometimes.

I LIKE THE NOTHING.

I really believe that being in new places forces you to think differently than you normally do, and from those departures away from your normal thought patterns come your best ideas and your inspirations for growth.

My life is definitely FAR from perfect and I still have about a MILLION flaws that I have to constantly work on, but with freedom comes the time, energy, and ability to do just that.

So I guess that’s what makes Road Trip 3 different – I’ve got some freedom in my life and with it, I just want to see some cool shit and spend time with people I love, relax out on the open road, take some pictures of some interesting rocks I see, and know that when I get back to Austin, I’ll be happy to be back in Austin.

I can’t say that things will always be like this (who can?), but this is how things are right now.

Also I wish to purchase one (1) marijuana when I arrive in Colorado. IT’S LEGAL, MOM.

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ronnykblair · 6 years

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“Bad Blood” Book Review: Fooling Most of the People for a Long, Long Time

While I read Bad Blood, John Carreyrou’s detailed account of the rise and fall of Theranos, two thoughts immediately came to mind.

First, if North Korea ever launched a startup, Theranos would be it.

The company operated the same way Kim Jong Un does: non-functional products, “launches” that backfire, massive fraud, dead employees, and a creepy old guy who monitored employee email and Internet usage.

Second, this story is amazing. They need to make it into a movie.

Then I realized that they are making it into a movie starring Jennifer Lawrence, with Adam McKay from The Big Short set to direct.

After extensive research, I’ve determined that North Korea did not officially back the company, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Kim family invested via Rupert Murdoch or Betsy DeVos.

Bad Blood is my favorite non-fiction book of the past decade.

It’s so good that it almost seems like fiction – a John Grisham thriller, maybe.

It takes the best parts of history’s most famous downfall stories and injects even more intrigue by adding the one element those stories lacked: human life.

This book isn’t directly related to recruiting or working in the finance industry.

But there are so many valuable takeaways that are indirectly related that I decided to write this review anyway:

What is This Book About, and Why Should You Care?

In case you’ve been living in a cave in Antarctica for the past ~3 years, Theranos was a massively hyped “unicorn” healthcare startup that aimed to perform hundreds of blood tests from a single drop of blood pricked from your finger.

No more needles! No more vials of blood!

Just one small problem: it is impossible to do this.

Blood from your finger is different from the blood in your veins because it is partially oxygenated, it’s contaminated by interstitial fluid, and the volume is very low.

In plain English, there’s not enough data, so you can’t solve the problem with a medical device.

You can do a few simple tests, such as the one for glucose levels, with finger-pricked blood, but not the hundreds of complex tests out there.

Despite that, Theranos still managed to raise $900 million over the years at a peak valuation of $9 billion.

But after more than a decade of lying to investors, threatening employees, and using non-functional devices to diagnose patients, Theranos finally began to implode in 2015.

That’s when WSJ investigative reporter John Carreyrou received a tip about the company, began his deep dive into it, and finally published the article that sparked a firestorm.

After that, the company’s trajectory resembled that of a spaceship being sucked into a black hole.

Regulatory agencies banned Theranos from running a lab, Walgreens ended its partnership, the COO was forced out, investors and partners started suing the company, and the SEC charged the CEO and COO (Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani) with massive fraud.

A criminal investigation is underway, and indictments are likely. Most likely, Theranos will soon be liquidated, and both the top executives will be in jail.

This story is a textbook example of how to do everything wrong at a startup.

And it’s a cautionary tale of what to avoid and how to detect deception if you’re an investor.

So… How Did a North Korean Startup Survive for Over a Decade?

Even if you’ve followed all the WSJ’s reporting on Theranos, you probably have one big question: How could such a fraudulent company last for so long?

Didn’t anyone notice that the Empress had no clothes before a reporter came along?

Bad Blood makes it clear that plenty of people were skeptical from the start.

The company never published peer-reviewed literature, its Board of Directors consisted of fossilized former diplomats who knew nothing about medicine, and it never attracted serious life science VC investors.

The original Ph.D. student who founded the company with Elizabeth Holmes thought her first idea was “science fiction,” and dozens of disgruntled employees quit along the way, convinced that the entire operation was a Potemkin village.

I can’t explain the company’s survival in one sentence, but here’s my summary:

Business Partners: Walgreens was paranoid that CVS would get the technology first, so they entered the partnership without proper due diligence. One skeptical consultant kept warning them, but he was silenced. This one goes in the FOMO (“fear of missing out”) bucket.

Investors: The company raised money mostly from family offices and VCs with no healthcare experience. And they pointed to early investors, such as Tim Draper and Larry Ellison, as evidence that “the smart money” was on board.

VCs with a track record in life sciences, such as Google Ventures and MedVenture Associates, passed when they realized the company couldn’t answer basic technical questions.

Employees: Pretty much all the employees figured out that the company was a fraud, which is why turnover was extremely high.

However, Theranos was super-secretive and used expensive lawyers and private investigators to threaten ex-employees who could have become whistleblowers.

Regulators: Theranos operated in “regulatory no man’s land” by labeling its diagnostics “lab-developed tests,” which are not regulated by the FDA.

Eventually, the regulators caught up to them and started conducting surprise lab inspections because of tips from anonymous ex-employees.

Patients: The company used its broken device(s) to test patients in Arizona and California, which later resulted in ~1 million voided tests.

Amazingly, they threatened doctors and patients who left bad Yelp reviews, but nothing could hide fraud on this scale.

These live deployments finally pushed it over the edge and alerted the broader population to the scam.

What I Loved

I’ve followed the Theranos story closely, but Bad Blood was great because it put together all the pieces in a logical order and gave them more emotional resonance.

The book conveys superbly the human tragedy, ranging from patients who received the wrong diagnoses to employee Ian Gibbons, the chief scientist who “committed suicide” under suspicious circumstances.

But what I loved most were the vividly drawn characters.

In particular, “Sunny” Balwani, the #2 at Theranos, seems like an amalgamation of every single horrible VP in investment banking.

Not only did he micromanage employees while knowing nothing about the product, but he also had the social skills of an autistic monkey.

When an employee quit and refused to sign a confidentiality agreement, Sunny sent a security guard after him, called the police, and then told the police the employee stole property.

When they asked what property was stolen, Sunny replied that the employee “stole property in his mind.”

Oh, and the whole time Sunny was at the company, he was also in a romantic relationship with CEO Elizabeth Holmes, who was ~20 years younger.

Award-winning corporate governance!

Areas for Improvement

That said, the book isn’t perfect.

There are a lot of characters to remember, and sometimes I lost track of who was doing what at which time.

The book moves in rough chronological order, but chapters tend to be thematic or character-based rather than time-based.

So, similar to TV shows like Westworld, the exact timeline can be a bit confusing (though the lack of robots makes it far less convoluted than Westworld).

Finally, the transition where John Carreyrou enters the story toward the end is a bit jarring, since the preceding chapters are written in the third person from the perspective of others.

Takeaways for the Finance Industry

Here’s what you can learn from this story even if you have no interest in startups, venture capital, or medical devices:

1) Story, Story, Story

Your story is everything. That’s why we focus on it heavily in the Interview Guide and the articles on this site.

A great story can sell anything, whether it’s a product or yourself in a job interview.

Elizabeth Holmes was a great storyteller who idolized Steve Jobs, and like Jobs, she could also sell anything.

But if the claims in your story can be disproven easily, your story will fall apart.

It’s not unusual for an early-stage biotech startup to make aggressive claims about its future products.

But what was unusual – and fraudulent – was to claim that the product was ready for real-life usage, when it clearly was not, and then to use it on patients.

This is why it’s a terrible idea to lie or even “spin” facts that can be easily disproven in interviews, such as your abilities in other languages, graduation dates, grades, employment dates, and job titles.

So many readers have gone too far with spinning that I’m going to rewrite the article on the topic later this year.

2) Healthcare != Technology

Many technology companies that launch apps, software, and even hardware adopt a “fake it ‘til you make it” attitude.

That’s fine for technology because no one dies if a smartphone app crashes.

And many students have famously dropped out of university and then started world-class technology companies… because you don’t need that much experience to get started.

Healthcare, though, is a different ball game.

Your product can’t “kind of work” unless you want to kill people.

And it’s almost impossible for 19-year-old university dropouts with no medical experience to start important healthcare companies.

If you’re trying to move into finance, you can use these industry differences to your advantage.

For example, if you have significant medical/biotech experience, you’re much stronger as a career changer candidate if you target healthcare groups at banks and VC firms.

They want people like you because no university graduate could understand those sectors as well as a Ph.D. or industry executive.

But if you want to get into the industry at the last minute, or you don’t have real work experience, it’s better to target sectors such as technology or consumer/retail where you can get up to speed quickly.

3) The Fallacy of Expertise Transferability

Many students at top universities believe that since they got into a top school, they are experts at everything – or at least, they could quickly become experts at anything.

The Board members and early investors of Theranos embraced similar logic:

“I’m the former Secretary of State/Defense or the founder of a multi-billion-dollar tech company. Therefore, I can also be a successful healthcare investor!”

Except… they’re completely different fields.

Facing down the Soviets in the Cold War is impressive, but it doesn’t make a 90-something former diplomat qualified to judge the merits of medical devices.

I outlined in a previous article how you can outwit and out-hustle Ivy League students to win job offers, and this point goes along with the advice there.

Yes, other candidates might have better credentials or higher GPAs…

…but will they take the time to learn the in’s and out’s of stock pitches, find contact information for hundreds of industry professionals, and then contact them in a socially calibrated way?

I’m not sure, but most “experts” would say it’s beneath them.

4) Focus on the Right Things for Your Development Stage – Not the Trappings of Power

As Theranos raised $900 million, Elizabeth Holmes spent much of the money on lawyers, new offices, a contingent of bodyguards, and yes, even bulletproof glass for her office (!).

She also put a ton of time and effort into distribution partnerships and sales.

For an early-stage technology company, it’s not necessarily wrong to focus on sales before your product is fully functional.

But for an early-stage healthcare company, nothing matters except for developing a working solution, passing clinical trials, and winning approval from regulators.

If your new device or vaccination or surgical method doesn’t work, partnerships won’t save you.

Consistently, companies focus on the wrong things and ignore the stage they’re at.

I even did the same thing back when I made the mistake of creating a $5,000 product for a $500 market.

In a way, I made the opposite mistake of Theranos: I had products that worked, and I wanted to make them even better to the point where no one noticed or cared.

But it was motivated by the same mistake: not understanding the stage I was at.

5) If “The End Goal” is Your Focus, Rethink Your Life!

When Holmes was young, a family member asked what she wanted to be when she grew up.

“A billionaire!” she replied.

That answer demonstrates why the fraud reached this level before collapsing: rather than trying different skills, becoming good at one, and then pursuing it, Holmes started with the end goal in mind.

And she stopped at nothing to pursue it, even if it meant lying to investors, threatening employees, and putting patients’ lives at risk.

Most entrepreneurs start working in a specific industry, get to know people, learn the key problems, and then launch new products/services.

Otherwise, it’s impossible to know what people will pay for and which solutions are feasible vs. science fiction.

Idolizing Steve Jobs and aiming to become a billionaire aren’t real goals; they’re aspirations of teenagers who do not yet know themselves.

As far as applicability to the finance industry, well, take a look at the comments thread on this article about finance as a long-term career.

Final Thoughts and Reality Distortion Fields

Both Steve Jobs and Elizabeth Holmes possessed “reality distortion fields” that let them recruit subordinates and convince investors, Board members, and the public of almost anything.

But Jobs also had a firm grasp on his own reality, and despite some exaggerations and problems, delivered products that worked.

By contrast, Holmes forgot to apply self-shielding, which let her reality distortion field twist her own perception of reality.

Aside from the upcoming indictment and trial, I don’t think we’ll be hearing much from her.

But if you want to find out more, the rumor is that she might head to North Korea.

Apparently, she’s an excellent fit.

The post “Bad Blood” Book Review: Fooling Most of the People for a Long, Long Time appeared first on Mergers & Inquisitions.

from ronnykblair digest https://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/bad-blood-book-review/

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